NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

After reading the blogpost on Construmex and productizing remittances, Roy Serventi, the President/CEO and founder of Infinity Systems International (ISI), contacted the NextBillion team. Roy, Rob Katz and I had a long talk on how ISI is also taking steps toward productizing remittances, the vast sums of money sent by immigrants to their home countries

ISI has identified a unique niche market that it believes will translate into a promising business opportunity. In both the U.S. and in Mexico ISI is formalizing agreements with organizations that currently cater to or want to offer products and services to the Latino market. These include hometown community organizations, local and national money transfer, check-cashing and pay-day loan organizations, and local and national convenience store and pharmacy chains. Mexican companies such as Gigante, Elektra and Novamedic are already part of the program.

ISI’s vision is to become the leading international merchant-based network and gateway servicing the underserved and underbanked Latino community. The ISI proposition looks to capitalize on three very large and distinct but converging trends:
1) The growth of the Hispanic demographic market
2) The growth of the international cash remittance market and
3) The growth in the use of stored value/gift cards.

ISI provides an alternative means for the transferring of hard-earned funds to family members in Mexico for basic needs: food, clothing, household items, medical care, pharmaceuticals, infant needs and housing. By cutting out the middleman, the ISI Tarjeta M?s? Program allows an immigrant to send money in the form of a stored value/gift card to a family member or friend, this way the money is targeted to a specific field or industry. In addition, it allows hard-working individuals in the U.S. to keep more of their wages by lowering the costs of money transfers.

Mr. Serventi has a Mexican background and he is committed to helping the people at the BoP and the Latino community in the U.S. He has a strong business reputation working in the areas of international business and investment with an emphasis on Mexico and Latin America. Mr. Serventi is the Managing Director of The Miramar Group, an international investment and corporate management firm and has worked in investment banking and venture capital. He has been instrumental in helping launch and manage a number of start-ups in the diagnostic health, Internet, and technology fields.

It is excellent that Mr. Serventi is taking advantage of this business opportunity, because as I said before on NextBillion, people that send money want to make sure that the money they send is spent well, not wasted. This is a good way for immigrants to ensure how their money is spent and at the same time, cut the excessive costs that other companies charge. In the long run, if more companies start investing and competing against this remittance transfer business, costs will be reduced and there will not be such a monopoly anymore.