Page 3 - Eurogiro News May2011_web version

Eurogiro News 3

Tjeerd Rienstra, CEO Eurogiro A/S

Trans-Fast provides its customers with a fast, convenient and reliable service for sending and receiving remittances, as well as payment of bills, through its global network of over 135,000 locations. This worldwide network consists of retailers, financial institu-tions, post offices and payment locations. Trans-Fast will implement the Eurogiro Credit and Cash services for payments into and out of the USA, and will connect to Eurogiro through the ELS (Eurogiro Local System). The target is to go live in the 2nd quarter of 2011.

Initially, Trans-Fast will contact Eurogiro members to discuss bilateral payments ex-change. However, it is also their intention to participate in the MultiLateral Framework. Trans-Fast's broad range of services pro-vides a variety of options for making incom-ing payments available for the beneficiaries, namely credit-to-bank accounts, mobile cre-dits, electronically loaded debit cards, cash pickup, and home delivery of cash payment.

Mr. Kumar, CEO of Trans-Fast tells, “For the remittance customer, this alignment with

Eurogiro welcomes Trans-Fast as a newmember in the US

Trans-Fast Remittances LLC, a leading provider of global remittances for over 20 years and headquartered in New York, is one of the latest new members of the Eurogiro community

the Eurogiro network proves our steadfast commitment to continuously expanding our network and providing convenient and reli-able money transfer services to the immi-grant communities internationally”. 3

The Eurogiro Community Meeting recognized the power of the Posts

Many speakers and delegates touched upon the opportunities for Posts in the global payments market today and how the Eurogiro community could beneft from being a bridge between Posts and banks. Also the March 11 earthquake in Japan, indeed impacting Japan Post Bank, caused refection

When I woke up on the morning of March 11th and saw the first pictures of the earth-quake in Japan, I realised how unique our community is. The earthquake had hap-pened many thousands of miles away, but it nevertheless felt very close due to the strong relationship we have with Japan Post Bank. When my e-mail to Japan Post Bank was answered immediately, I felt relieved. Later we heard that many of their branches had

been destroyed and that many employees had tragically lost their lives. We tried to convey our feelings and condolences and did our best to support our member in Japan from our network management centre and by informing the Eurogiro community. In the General Community Meeting that was held in Warsaw from 10th to 12th May, Japan Post Bank told how their disaster recovery plan was organized and showed evidence that it had been successful.

Again, the General Community Meeting was a great event with almost all members pres-ent. Later in this newsletter you can find an article reporting on the event. The ‘power of the Posts’ as a Board member put it, was the theme of many of the sessions. Indeed, many recognize that the Posts can play a key role in securing low cost, efficient payments to all citizens in the world and foster financial inclu-sion. We would like to extend our apprecia-tion to our excellent hosts in Warsaw, Polish Post and Bank Pocztowy, who provided a fascinating city tour and visits to wonderful

restaurants. We are thankful for their engage-ment and their great support.

During the meeting there was also a Board Meeting and I am pleased to report that Sylvie Solignac from La Banque Postale, France, was elected as the new Chairman of the Board. She succeeds Armin Brun from Swiss Post PostFinance who fulfilled that role for more than two years with much energy and enthusiasm. Personally, and on behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Armin Brun for his work and I am looking forward to working with Sylvie Solignac in the coming years.

Finally, as you know, Eurogiro has two Customer Councils, one from Europe and one from Asia Pacific. We held a combined meeting in Korea in March, and discussed how to move forward in the areas of highest strategic importance in Eurogiro: encourag-ing members to increase business between each other, expanding the reach of the net-work and taking advantage of new business and technology opportunities. 3

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