Retail giant Puregold Price Club Inc. said Wednesday it is diversifying into money remittance as an added service to customers.
“Our target are the overseas Filipino workers and Filipino consumers, in general. We expect this project to be a game changer in the remittance market because of a few novel ideas we squeezed in,” Puregold president Ferdinand Vincent Co told reporters in a news briefing in Makati City.
Puregold’s remittance service, called “Pure Padala,” aims to enable senders from abroad and local senders to apportion the money they send for specified expenses for education, utilities and groceries.
Pure Padala is a service offered by Puregold in partnership with G-Cash, Globe Telecom’s money management service. It is linked with at least 57 remittance agencies in 27 countries.
“We have tie-ups with educational institutions as well as with several utility companies. For groceries, the recipient can only transact business with Puregold,” Co said.
He said senders could give instructions to Puregold remittance centers on what particular goods the money should be spent in. The sender can instruct Pure Padala to specify that the grocery money will be spent for food only, leaving no provision for vices such as liquor and cigarettes.
“In this manner, the money that senders remit are spent wisely,” Co said, adding that about 20 percent to 30 percent of remittances from abroad were not spent wisely.
The recipient will get advisory from Pure Padala when and where to retrieve the remittance. For remittance for grocery, the recipient can pay directly by showing the digital notification sent to his/her phone to the cashier.
In case of deleted texts or notification, the recipient will have to validate claim at the customer service station.
Puregold began testing Pure Padala last year to determine if the market can absorb another player. The company yielded as much as P100 million in total remittances in 2014.
The company plans to establish remittance centers in all 239 Puregold branches nationwide.
The company said it would charge the lowest remittance rate among other money centers in the Philippines.
The company said it would first concentrate on the remittance markets in Hong Kong, Singapore and the US.