Contact International

FamiliaNet for separated immigrant families

FamiliaNet, Serving the International Remittance Industry

Contact International has identified a huge, growing and completely underserved market in immigrants, foreign workers and students living in the US and Western Europe and sending (or receiving) remittances to or from their home countries. These people are often cut off from their families for months, or years at a time. Many regularly send money home. Contact’s proprietary technology will enable them to communicate face-to-face with their loved ones through reciprocal video mails conveniently and at low cost. Our first focus will be on people sending remittances between the US and Latin America. We have established FamiliaNet to serve the Hispanic community.

Due to increasing globalization, the phenomenon of foreign workers living far from their families has become pervasive on a worldwide basis. Most of these workers routinely send money home. Just from the US, the amount of money transferred has grown tremendously and now surpasses $90 billion annually, over $14.5 billion to Mexico alone. The average transfer by a foreign worker from the US to Mexico is $330, done over 4 million times per month. These numbers are expected to continue to grow at a steep rate. The US, the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and other developed countries now have large and growing populations of foreign workers and an expanding remittance industry.

In the post 9/11/01 world, the need for face-to-face communications with separated families has become even more pressing and poignant, especially for Latin Americans working in the US. Increasing border security has forced these workers to stay in the US much longer than before, separated from the families they are working so hard to support.. The average illegal worker now stays in the US nine years, up from three years in 1990.

Contact will offer our FamiliaNet service, in funds transfer locations in the US, Mexico, and other Latin countries that will enable foreign workers and others to connect face-to-face with their loved ones. Our customers will be cash transfer locations, such as currency exchanges, check cashing facilities and bodegas which serve the Hispanic community. The entrance of big banks into the Latin American remittance business is putting increasing pressure on their margins. FamiliaNet offers these retailers a new source of revenue, and most importantly, a chance to differentiate their services in a way that banks cannot. At the same time, the opportunity for a foreign worker to be in face-to-face contact with family and friends after months or years of separation is priceless.

The transaction takes place through the sale of a prepaid FamiliaNet video card to the customer by the transfer location. This allows the customer to send and receive video mail with delivery instructions attached to the funds transfer or to schedule and later to conduct a live video conference call. It can also be utilized separately from the funds transfer. The actual communication takes place through a photo-booth type kiosk now in development utilizing a phone and touch screen video display technology. So the customers can interact with loved ones on a virtual TV! Contact provides easy to use instructions and total customer support in both English and Spanish.