Now, get your money from abroad transferred in 10 minutes

Shikha Chadha

HOW long did you have to wait last time to encash a cheque sent by your non-resident Indian (NRI) brother? A week, perhaps even a month. With the launch of a new scheme by the department of posts you can now transfer money sent to you for personal use by your relatives abroad in 10 minutes.

The scheme, called ‘Western Union Money Transfer Scheme’, is to be launched on April 19. For this, the department of posts has signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States Fortune 500 company, Western Union Financial Services, on January 24 this year.

Under the scheme, to be launched at postal head offices in all the state capitals and Union territories, unlimited cash can be transferred by filling up green forms “To end money”. The principle amount and service charges have to be paid depending upon the amount of money to be transferred. The service charges, at present, are generally around $50. On submitting the form, a money transfer control number (MTCN) would be assigned, and an original password given.

In case the transfer amount exceeds $500, the payee’s identification would be done based on a test question and the physical description supplied by the sender. Once the money to be remitted is accepted, the sender would be asked to ring up the payee, who can then collect the amount from the nearest post office with this facility. The post master there would check the authenticity of the payee through production of an identifying document, such as a passport, voter identity card, driving licence, etc. or by asking the test question.

After this, the payee would be required to fill up a yellow form ‘To receive money’. Meanwhile, the post master would check with any one of the 18 nodal centres of Western Union to confirm electronic clearance. The entire process should not take more than 10 minutes.

“This scheme is part of the diversification drive undertaken to make the post office serve its customers better. Not only will customers stand to benefit from this scheme, it will also fetch huge foreign exchange for the country. It will also open a clean, quick, reliable channel for people to send money. The Reserve Bank of India has not put any tabs on the money sent for personal use.” the secretary, department of posts, BN Som, told The Financial Express.

Under the agreement with Western Union, within the very first year of initiation, the number of post offices offering this service should increase from 100 to 750. By the end of three years, this number is likely to go up to 3,000. Western Union, which has been in this line since 1851, has 18 nodal centres that would be accessible to the post offices to confirm electronic clearance. These nodal centres are in Delhi, Bhopal, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Goa, Calicut, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Vadodara, Mangalore, Ludhiana, Pune, Chennai, Coimbatore and Cochin. These centres have direct access to Western Union’s head offices abroad. Western Union has about 95,000 agents world wide, of these 1,000 are in India.
Initially, Western Union will provide the stock of ‘To receive money’ forms and subsequently the posts department will start printing them. Each head office that offers this facility would need to keep Rs 50,000 as overnight cash and would also require a PC486 Pentium computer, with a modem and two other MTNL lines for incoming and outgoing calls.

The service charged by Western Union will be split in the ratio of 70:30 i.e for every $50 charged to the sender, the postal department will get $14.5. A customer service centre (CSC) would also be set up in the postal headquarters to serve as a common platform for interactive sessions between Western Union, department of posts, customers. The postal department is also expected to soon acquire a toll free number for customers to access the CSC.