General Principles for International Remittance Services

Remittances can be analyzed for various reasons - for example, because of their impact on development, because of the close relationship with often politically sensitive migration issues or because of the need to monitor the flows for balance of payments purposes. All these aspects of remittances are interrelated and so cannot be ignored. However, in line with the request from the G8, the focus of this report is on the payment system aspects of remittances. The term “remittance transfer” is used in this report to emphasize this.

The purpose of the report is to analyze these payment system aspects of remittances and provide general principles to assist countries who want to improve the market for remittance transfers. The principles are not intended to be prescriptive but rather to give guidance. The application of the principles should help to achieve the public policy objectives of having safe and efficient international remittance services, which require the markets for the services to be contestable, transparent, accessible and sound.