South Africa: The South Africa-SADC remittance channel

There are an estimated 3.3m migrant workers from other SADC countries in South Africa, between them sending around R11.2 billion rand home each year – R7.6 bn of which is estimated to flow through informal channels such as sending cash with a bus or taxi driver. The sheer volume of cross-border remittance flows and the large proportion sent informally indicates not only an untapped market opportunity for the formal sector to capitalize on, but also a strong policy imperative to reduce access barriers to the formal financial system for migrant workers and facilitate formalization of cross-border remittances. These are the high-level findings of a recent study commissioned by FinMark Trust and conducted by DNA Economics.