Get to know Yourpay, an E-money Remittance Application for Migrant Workers

Remittance players are still controlled by banks with all the limitations they have, often making it difficult for migrant workers to send their salaries to families in Indonesia. Yourpay wants to take this opportunity with a more friendly approach according to current trends.

yourpay is an electronic money application that has obtained three permits from Bank Indonesia, namely a provider of electronic money services, fund transfers, and digital financial services. This startup was founded in 2018 by Christilia Angelica Widjaja as the sole founder. He is the grandson of Eka Tjipta Widjaja who is the founder of the Sinarmas Group.

To DailySocial, Founder & CEO of Yourpay Christilia said, he built Yourpay sourced from genuine empathy for other women, especially migrant workers and mothers. He got inspiration for an example of doing business with empathy from his late grandmother who was a philanthropist.

“Youpay has a focus on the community unbanked and underbanked of migrant workers and their families. Everything from price/performance ratio and all features are considered and created to always prioritize and advance human values ​​according to user needs," he said.

Not just being a player e-money, Yourpay takes focus on remittance service for migrant workers abroad. They can easily convert their cash-based income to Yourpay balance, directly converted into Rupiah with top up through partners o. The balance can be used directly to be transferred to a bank account belonging to a family member and disbursed again to pay for various needs.

The fees charged are also relatively cheap and even claimed to save up to 10,5 times more than traditional remittance services. For example, for transfers to other applications from different countries, a fee starts from Rp. 5 thousand. The Yourpay application also provides various PPOB bill payment features that have partnered with Yourpay, such as PLN and BPJS Health, as well as fund transfers to fellow Yourpay users (p2p transfers).

“Yourpay was built with an observant perspective, not following the trend of burning money methods. Until now, marketing costs incurred are still below 1% of the total Gross Revenue. We haven't advertised anywhere and rely on the grassroots community of users overseas and in Indonesia."

According to UN data, more than 200 million migrant workers in the world send money to more than 800 million family members every year. Thus, there has been a urge for initiatives in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration by the United Nations so that international financial service providers can reduce transfer costs and facilitate greater financial inclusion through remittances.

For the record, the World Bank report released in May 2021 revealed a decline in remittances for all migrant workers in 2020 to US$ 540 billion from US$ 548 billion in 2019. The decline of only 1,6% in the midst of the pandemic is evidence that in the midst of economic difficulties globally, workers are not cutting remittances to loved ones at home.

"This remittance covers many basic household needs. Although Covid-19 has been a tough test, in fact the remittance data is proof of the binding of migrants with their families back home. Yourpay adopted and participated in celebrating the International Day of Family Remittances because it has a vision to focus on serve users from among migrant workers and their families."

Yourpay business development

Christilia said, the average value of transactions that Yourpay successfully processed was between $200-$500 (around Rp. 2,9 million-Rp. 7,2 million) per month for top up. Since the beta version was launched in June 2020, Yourpay has now pocketed a cumulative total GMV of more than $11 million (almost Rp160 billion), with a transaction volume of more than 200 thousand.

Yourpay registered users are said to have more than 50 thousand people, spread across Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macau are the main contributors to Yourpay's business with a percentage of 72% of the total cumulative GMV.

To boost the company's business in the two countries, Yourpay announced a strategic partnership with Chandra Remittance. A total of 60 Chandra Remittance outlets in Hong Kong can now receive top up Yourpay balance. Chandra Remittance is a local remittance company founded by former migrant workers from Lombok. The company serves almost 95% of migrant workers from Indonesia to send their salaries to their families in Indonesia.

Yourpay also plans to enter Singapore. The company is currently in the process of applying for a Payment Services Act (PSA) permit at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). PSA is a license for payment systems and payment service providers in Singapore. Other targeted countries are Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.

Christilia said that in order to achieve the company's vision of creating more impact for migrant workers, it is currently raising an initial round of funding. Previously the company relied on organic business growth and bootstrap. “Yourpay targets to get funding from global investors who have the same vision and understand the importance impact, and of course continue to grow and improve tractions, " he concluded.