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Avoiding American Wire Services

Submitted April 15, 2006 - 8:42 am by Benjamin Melançon
A reader wrote me:

You expressed concern about Western Union
and other money transfer services charging 10-20%
in fees.  Most of the Latinos that I know do not
use the American wire services.  They use very
inexpensive ones in the Tiendas Latinas that
charge about $10 to send up to $1000.00 to Mexico
among other countries.

My first thought: I wonder if I can use one of these inexpensive companies to bail out my brother yet again in West Virginia.  Probably not.

My second thought is that I'm very surprised that transfer fees would be low as 1%.  Maybe they're gaming the exchange rate (Western Union did and lost a lawsuit).  I also know that a number of Brazilians, anyhow, do use Western Union and I'm still interested in an organization taking only the minimum cost of transfer, as a moral issue, and because such an organization could serve as the infrastructure for a radical communications network as well (not to mention a network of community banks to replace payday loan places).

Mostly, though, there is no question I was speaking rather stupidly.  People who generally have a better sense of community than the average person in the U.S., and who have sent $53 billion dollars a year to their home communities, have figured out far better ways to do it than I have figured out to bail out my brother in miscellaneous U.S. states.  I'd love more detail.

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