记得一定要跟着我们精读外刊喔！
今天是一个会发光的单词，你认识吗？
remittance
Making remittances cheaper
让汇款更低价
◆remittance(n.) 汇款金额
The cost of cross-border payments needs to drop
跨境支付成本需要下调
Sending money across borders costs too much
也许你还记得《欲望都市》里面的印度男侍者，他独自一人来到迪拜打工，妻儿则留在印度，时隔数月才会攒出机票钱飞回印度与家人团圆。他定期把生活费寄回家里，虽然生活辛苦却因提高了家人的生活水平而仍然感到幸福。女主角Carrie深深被这种简单的爱感动了，在离开前甚至留给他现金帮他回家。事实上，直到今天，这种现象依然十分普遍，我们也总会有疑虑：为什么他们赚着较为可观的收入，自己和家人的生活仍然贫苦呢？今天分享的文章就与这件事相关，让我们一起来看看跨境转账背后的故事吧！
01
◆flat fee 固定收费模式
◆equivalent (n.)等值 (adj.)等价的，同等的（词根equal）
无论以何种途径，跨境支付总是会伴随着高昂的手续费。而随着经济的不断崛起，发展中国家的跨境交易金额不断上升，同时需要承担的交易成本也是相当大的数目。
For most of human history, sending money across borders has cost the earth. Thankfully for globetrotters and e-shoppers in the rich world, that has changed in the past decade. A shift from cash and travelers’ cheques towards digital payments has cut the cost of moving funds around. And a new generation of fintech firms has broken the stranglehold that big banks used to have on money transfers (see article). As a result, fees have fallen. The cost of a transfer between consumers or small firms who are both in G7 countries can now cost 2% or less. This year some $10trn will pass across borders. As prices fall further, the sums will grow.
长期以来，跨境汇款手续费高昂。而近年来环球旅行者和网购的人们使这一情况有所改变。现如今，数字支付在逐渐取代现金和支票，因此金钱的跨境流通的花费不再那么昂贵，这一切都要归功于新兴金融科技公司，是他们打破了老牌银行在该业务上的垄断。比如G7国家范围内的普通消费者或是小企业间的转账交易费用就会有所下降。与此同时，随着跨境交易费用的降低，跨境交易额也有望大幅提升。
02
Yet one corner of this industry remains trapped in a dusty time warp: remittances, or the practice of foreign workers sending money to relatives back home. There the costs are still sky high, at about 7%. That matters. The sums involved are vast—$550bn of remittances will go to developing countries this year, more than all the capital they receive as investment from multinational companies, says the World Bank（世界银行）. There are 266m migrants, who often send money home. Many of them are poor, and so are almost all their relatives.
然而，在跨境汇款手续费降低的大环境下，仍有部分情况未能得到改善——境外劳工寄钱给家人时就要交付高达百分之七的费用。在外务工人员寄回国内的总钱数超乎人们想象，世界银行调查显示，这些发展中国家收到的本国国民在外寄回的钱数甚至要高于跨国公司在其投资额。但是这些在外务工人员及其国内的家庭普遍都很贫困。
03
Remittances cost the earth for several reasons. Typically at least one leg of the journey still involves physical cash—either in the “first mile”, when a construction worker or waiter hands over hard-earned banknotes to a specialist transfer firm or to a bank, or the “last mile” on the other side of the world, when the cash is handed over to their families, who lack bank accounts. These vast networks are expensive to maintain—Western Union, a 168-year-old transfer firm, is able to send cash to, or pick it up from, over half a million physical sites around the world.
跨境汇款费用高昂也是有原因的——这些务工人员及其家属普遍没有银行账户，因此邮寄现金当然需要一定额外花费。比如西联汇款经营着这项业务，现金寄送业务可以覆盖到全球的大部分地区。
04
High fees also reflect anti-competitive behavior and a growing thicket of Western money-laundering rules which are meant to police al-Qaeda barons, but which have ended up being a nightmare for expatriate Filipina maids. In combination, these two forces are strangling new entrants. Between 2011 and 2015, when the industry saw a brief flurry of startups, average remittance fees fell by 17%. But in 2016 the number of startup launches fell by half compared with the year before. Fees have since levelled off.
这种垄断性质的汇款行业所制订出的高昂费用，一定程度上可以打击恐怖组织财阀的洗钱行为，但同时，对于那些在国外艰辛赚钱的菲佣来说无疑是噩梦，在这一行业的起落之间，总的汇款数目基本没有变化。
05
To prod remittances into the 21st century, two things need to happen. In the short term governments in the developing world need to help unleash competition. Sometimes the big firms that dominate cash transfers, such as MoneyGram and Western Union, have exclusive partnerships with state-run bodies that have a dominant role in the first or last mile. For example, post offices that receive payments are often contractually committed to using a single transfer firm. Deals that lock out rivals should be banned. Governments in the rich world need to devise their money-laundering rules with competition in mind. Simple adjustments could lower the burden of compliance that startups face. For example, fintechs could be required to track every 20th transaction falling below a defined threshold, instead of every last one of them.
为了使跨境汇款业务适应21世纪新的需求，发展中国家要打破该业务的垄断现象（因为垄断公司大多与发展中国家的国企有合作往来），激发市场竞争，使业务使用者从中受益。发达国家要做的则是，换一种方式打击洗钱活动，同时打破垄断，刺激行业竞争。
06
In the long run the answer to the remittances puzzle is a shift away from expensive cash-based systems and a bypassing of banks and transfer firms altogether. This could yet happen. Across Africa, Asia and Latin America hundreds of millions of people are using e-commerce and transport applications on mobile phones that typically have payment systems and digital wallets, too. Entrepreneurs and tech firms are working out how to stitch all these local networks together. In time, perhaps, sending $200 from the rich world to the emerging one will cost almost nothing and the payments revolution will be complete.
为解决这个问题，整个跨境汇款体系，银行，转账中介公司，都应该做出改变。其实现如今，在世界上的很多地区，电子支付以及移动支付应用都已经十分完善，如果把这些技术以及应用网络进行整合，扩展到更大的范围，跨境转账就不再会如此昂贵。
END
kk说：
跨境汇款之所以费用高昂，是因为这一过程中既有电讯费，又有手续费，并且操作比较费时。文中提到过的西联汇款费用计算方式还是比较简单的（如上图），纯粹的按照金额梯度来。但从数额来看，手续费15~30美元不等，折算一下大约100~200元人民币，对于学生或者普通务工人员来说压力其实很大。同时，西联汇款还可能存在诈骗以及信息泄露危险。其实，导致这些问题出现的主要原因还是行业垄断，由于不允许随身携带大量现金出入境，海外务工人员不得不选择这样的中介进行汇款，从中付出的额外花费也就不得不忍受。解决这一问题的途径之一，就是在文中提到过的鼓励新兴企业开展业务，增强行业竞争，以此倒逼企业降低费用，为转账人员省去不必要花销。而另一途径则更加显然，试想，把蚂蚁金服，微信转账，支付宝这类的应用软件扩展到全球范围内，跨境转账还会困难吗？
在看在看~wow
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