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Money tranfers to
Mexico a growing business
By Geralda Miller
RENO
GAZETTE-JOURNAL
March 17, 2003
Once a month Maria
Arias sends about $300 to her in-laws in Mexico
as part of a growing global money
transfer business from Reno.
About 47 percent off
all Hispanics born outside the United
States regularly send money to their
country of origin. Washoe County has a
Hispanic population of 49,360.
In 2001, $13 billion
was transferred from the United States to
Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras
and Nicaragua, according to a report from
the Pew Hispanic Center, a
Washington-based non-profit agency
designed to improve understanding of the
U.S. Hispanic population. Money transfers
to those five countries, which received
almost all its business from the United
States, totaled more than $10 billion in
2000 and is projected to total $14.2
billion in 2002.
Most Hispanic
immigrants surveyed use Western Union or
MoneyGram, the market-share leaders in
the money-transfer business. Arias, the
community reinvestment officer at Wells
Fargo & Co. in Reno, has an account
at the bank that automatically sends the
money to Mexico.
Arias’ husband,
Rodrigo Arias, collects $100 each from
his brother and sister to send to their
56-year-old mother in Morelia, Mexico,
who picks up the money from an ATM
machine. Their father does not know about
the gift.
“In our
culture, most of the time it’s the
woman who pays the bills,” said
Arias, who moved to Reno from Guadalajara,
Mexico, in 1984. “She’s
appreciative because she can live a
middle-class kind of life without stress.
They live in a city where it’s kind
of expensive. It feels good, because I
know they need it.”
Those transferring
money typically are recent immigrants
with little education, low income and
unaware of banking systems, according to
the report. They usually rely on
recommendations, familiarity and
convenience when deciding which
money-transferring system to use.
Wells Fargo
partnered with Grupo Financiero Bancomer
SA, Mexico’s largest bank, in 1995
to offer the InterCuenta Express Account
service to its customers.
Customers who open
an account with Wells Fargo can send up
to $1,000 a day to Mexico for $10 a
transfer.
“It’s
absolutely been a growing business,”
said Sean French, president of Wells
Fargo in northern Nevada. “I think
it’s growing primarily because it is
a cost-effective way for people to send
money to friends and family.”
Western Union and
MoneyGram collect a $15 fee on a
comparable wire transfer of up to $300
and charge as much as $50 for sending
$1,000 to Mexico. In some cases,
MoneyGram charges a flat fee of $15 for
any amount.
People using the
bank service transfer an average $500 per
transaction.
The Pew report found
the average wire transfer sent by
Hispanics was between $200 and $300.
“We don’t
really offer this service to compete with
Western Union,” said spokeswoman
Natalie Mitchell. “It’s a
value-added service.”
MoneyGram has been a
popular way of wiring money from the United
States to Mexico and Latin America.
“Now, it’s
growing globally,” said Patty
Phillips, spokeswoman for Viad Corp., the
parent company of Travelers
Express/MoneyGram. “Now it’s
becoming a U.S.-to-the-world business.”
For the past
century, Western Union has been offering
service to Mexico, its main consumer
market.
“We certainly
were one of the first in the business to
offer a safe and reliable service,”
said spokeswoman Wendy Carver-Herbert.
The company now is
seeing growth with money transferred to
southeast Asia, Carver-Herbert said.
“We’re
seeing some similar growth trends in the Reno
market as we are some of our other key
markets in the California/ Nevada area,”
she said.
Nona Katzenstein
uses Western Union to send about $300
every other month to her cousin in a town
called Ulan-Ude, which is near Siberia.
Katzenstein, a retired school teacher
living in South Lake Tahoe, said she sent
cash in the mail for several years until
they stopped receiving it.
“It’s a
little expensive to send Western Union,
but at least all they have to do is
present a passport and tell the teller
the number of the receipt,” she
said. “That’s the only thing
that really works.”
Katzenstein said she
does it because her cousin is a retired
artist living on a pension of less than
$50 a month.
“It’s a
joy for me to be able to do that,”
she said. “They need it desperately.
We’re just fortunate we have some
savings to share.”
Vera Voropeava, 42,
said she is expected to send money to her
parents, who live in Ukraine on a pension
of about $15 a month.
So she sends about
$100 a month to her 74-year-old father
and 70-year-old mother from her earnings
as a cocktail waitress at Silver Legacy.
She said she uses Western Union or
friends to deliver the money.
“You can’t
just let them die and say ‘I’m
sorry,’” said Voropeava, who
has lived in Reno for three years.
Geralda Miller gmiller@rgj.com
Article URL:
http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/html/2003/03/16/36962.php?sp1=rgj&sp2=News&sp3=Local+News
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