No-Fee Trading for Global Remittance Companies From OKLink Hailed as “Meaningful Milestone”

OKLink, a Hong Kong-based global blockchain money network, is offering $100 million in free remittance trades to international remittance companies in order to promote remittance payments and accelerate the growth of new money transfer companies.

Remittance payments — earnings which foreign workers send home to their families around the world — may be one of the best use cases for digital currencies. The remittance market is estimated at $500 billion.

Jack C. Liu, Head of International Business at OKCoin, one of the world’s largest bitcoin trading exchanges, and Chief Strategy Officer at its subsidiary, OKLink, said,“The world’s financial transfers run on antiquated technology built nearly half a century ago. Slow, costly, and favoring large transactions, these qualities are in contrast to the emerging payment needs of today’s ever-connected global economy. OKLink believes in a future where small-value cross-border transfers will be as simple, fast, and cheap as a text message.”

OKLink has plans to subsidize all fees, up to a combined total of $100 million, on cross-border transfers for all partner companies on their network. These initial partners include Coinsecure, Coins.ph, Rebit, MOIN Inc., Coinone, Coinplug, Coincheck, BitoEX and BitPesa.

“India holds the largest share of remittances around the globe, with over $70 billion of inward remittance in 2015, at an average fee of 6 percent,” said Mohit Kalra, CEO of Coinsecure in India. “What Coinsecure and OKLink plan to do is going to be phenomenal.”

“Our platform is built on the trust of the blockchain, using digital assets to settle among participants in an instant, secure, and transparent manner,” OKLink said in a statement released today. “It eliminates the need for pre-funding by settling every transaction in real-time using stable and native digital assetsRebit first pioneered using Bitcoin for remittances,” said John Bailon, CEO of Rebit. “We’re very excited to join the OKLink network, whose resources and influence will create a strong alliance of companies committed to making blockchain remittances work for any customer, anywhere in the world.”

Titan Cheng, CEO of Taiwan-based BitoEX said, “Our partnership with OKLink will help us expand the scope of our global remittance offerings and bring an unparalleled customer experience for the 600,000 expatriates in Taiwan.”

“This is a very meaningful milestone for blockchain technology, which is closely watched by regulators and practitioners from all over the world,” Wonhee Shin, CTO at Coinone in Korea, said. “Finally the technology has moved away from the concept phase and into the real usage phase.”

“We are thrilled with the reception OKLink has received from industry leading companies,” Liu said of his company’s new initiative, “and we hope to support their growth further with this incentive promotion.”

OKLink is currently available in fifteen countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas, and raised $10 million in its initial Series A round.

Participating companies on OKLink will be able to process individual payments at the mid-market exchange rate for the first $100,000 of transactions. Transactions under $500 will qualify for the subsidy. Eligible companies must sign up by December 31, 2016, and will have until March 31, 2017, to complete the free transfers.

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