We are PayGuard and we're building a payments platform that would specialize in long-distance/cross-border transactions. http://stark-river-6968.herokuapp.com/ We do this by combining your normal payments gateway with the global network of an international money transfer company (Western Union) with the twist of "escrow". We got our rejection letter too but we are forging ahead with launching our beta late this May.…
I always thought the main barrier with international money transfers was the cost. If your backbone is something like WU, how do you reduce costs?...and can't Western Union roll out of bed one day and decide to make it even easier to send money?
No we're not planning to link with WU directly, no need for that. You can actually build that network yourself by designing your system to be accessible to those involved in the distribution. Xoom.com built their own network from the ground up, and they only charge $5.99 per transfer. I had dealt with these distributors before when I launched moneytran back in 2005, too bad the state of CA didn't approve my license to transfer money because I didn't have the 500K minimum asset to qualify so I had to shut down. I tried to bootstrap it and I was just a one man team. Now I'm working with a brilliant team and we're trying to raise funding. Last time it was just all my savings. Because of regulations it is virtually impossible to bootstrap a payments or money transfer service.