Singapore fintech Aleta Planet and Zhongguo Remittance (长诚中国汇款), one of Singapore’s leading money-transfer companies, have launched Aleta China Express (ACE), an online service that offers consumers a faster and safer way to send money from the city-state to China.
The move online is timely for Zhongguo Remittance since many of its counter services are shuttered or shortened because of movement restrictions put in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It also represents a significant step forward for a traditional cash business.
ACE is powered by Aleta Planet’s proprietary technology that operates on UnionPay’s platform. China’s UnionPay is a global payment network that serves the world’s largest cardholder base of over eight billion UnionPay cards.
ACE will allow tens of thousands of Singapore residents, especially Chinese nationals including students and migrant workers who make up the bulk of Zhongguo Remittance’s customer base, to send money to bank accounts in China within 60 seconds. The transfers will be done via UnionPay’s secure network using an application interface created by Aleta Planet. There is no third-party involved in the process, thus keeping costs down and efficiency up.
As part of the launch promotion, customers will be able to make transfers of as much as S$1,000 without incurring any transaction fees. The promotion will go on for three months until 31 August 2020.
To access the ACE service, consumers can visit the Zhongguo Remittance website at https://zhongguoremittance.com/. A mobile application for ACE will be developed at a later stage.
Aleta Planet’s Chairman and CEO, Mr Ryan Gwee, said: “We are pleased to partner Zhongguo Remittance, Singapore’s leading remittance service for renminbi, to provide its customers with a fast, secure way of sending money back to families in China. “The lockdown that we see in many parts of the world including Singapore, shows the urgency to embrace digital technology in our everyday life and especially for a task as essential as sending money to loved
ones.
“Aleta Planet is committed to helping businesses and individuals harness the power of technology to maintain some semblance of normal life during this difficult and unprecedented time.”
Jed Huang, CEO of Zhongguo Remittance, said: “This partnership with Aleta Planet is most timely for us and our customers. It offers an additional and useful channel during a period when the cash remittance service has been disrupted by social distancing measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
“We do not see a complete shift to cashless transactions as customer behaviour does not change overnight and there will still be customers who want the human interaction they get at our branches. But we are optimistic about the growth of online remittance, especially among the younger demographic.”