The agreement sees innovative start-up Azimo continue to revolutionise the international transfer of money direct to bank accounts by taking advantage of Earthport's established, industry leading service.

The combination of Earthport's fast and efficient payment capability and Azimo's mobile, social and web-based consumer interface enables remittance customers to send money back home faster, more securely, and at lower prices.

The global market for remittances is expected to reach $608 billion by 2014 of which $468 billion will flow to developing countries. Currently, the annual level of remittances made to many developing countries from citizens working abroad can represent between 7% and 35% of a nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Remittances to developing countries are projected to grow by 7.9 percent in 2013, 10.1 percent in 2014 and 10.7 percent in 2015 to reach $534 billion in 2015.

"Azimo's mission is to deliver fast, simple and above all low cost money transfers to Europe's hard working migrants. Payments to bank accounts are an increasingly important part of what we do. We chose to work with Earthport because they have the robust platform, broad network and low cost structure allowing us to better serve our customers. From today Azimo's online clients can benefit from a highly automated service with full visibility of when their payments will arrive, and exactly how much their recipients will receive. Sophisticated validation on country specific data means we reduce exceptions to almost zero and further drive down costs" said Michael Kent, CEO of Azimo. "Why does this matter? If we could decrease the global percentage commissions for money transfer from where they are today at 9% by 50% that would put upwards of $20bn back into the hands of those in developing countries who need it most."

"We are delighted to add Azimo, part of the new wave of consumer facing financial services start-ups, to our client roster. Building on our robust and tried and tested platform will help them quickly grow their business by offering cost-effective, transparent payment services to segments of the market not yet effectively served by banks or other payment providers" said Paul Thomas, Executive Director at Earthport. "Our recent partnership with IFC demonstrates the importance global development organisations place on facilitating secure, reliable money transfer services to developing markets. We believe the Azimo service will build on the Earthport platform to further accelerate the ability of the currently un-banked and under-banked to take part in global commerce - and increase financial inclusion in developing nations," he continued.