Frontier India Current Affairs

Written on April 29, 2008 – 9:56 pm | by FICA |

Moneybookers, one of Europe’s largest online payment systems, today revealed the movement of money out of the country by migrants working in the UK. Foreign workers living in the UK are typically sending GBP200 per month to their friends and relatives back home, although this figure rises to GBP550 for French migrants.

As the debate about the costs and benefits of immigration continues to intensify as a key political battleground, the study by Moneybookers provides an interesting insight into the flow of money out of
the country. Moneybookers has almost 5 million customers and is extremely popular with migrant workers as it is quick and easy to set up an account while providing extremely competitive rates for secure international money transfer services - only 1% or EUR0.5, whichever is less.

In fact, around half of Moneybookers’ account holders use the money transfer service to make payments back to their homeland. While the top recipient country is Poland, followed by India and Russia, in terms of the amount sent per head the French are in the lead with GBP550 per month compared to GBP330 per month by Indian migrants and GBP290 by Polish migrants. Russian migrants are between them with transfers of GBP310 per month.