The gender gap for sending digital remittances to Nigeria is rapidly closing as new data from WorldRemit shows digitally-savvy Nigerian women abroad are sending more money home.
The gender gap between male and female WorldRemit customers sending to Nigeria between 2014 and 2018 has narrowed by 20 percent.
Nigerians living abroad sent home a record $25bn (NGN 9 trillion) in 2018, making Nigeria the largest remittance receiving country in Africa. As remittances continue to grow, women are making an increasing contribution to the country’s development.
To mark International Women’s Day, leading online money transfer service WorldRemit and Access Bank celebrate the contribution Nigerian women living and working abroad make to their home country, with new data revealing that the gender gap for sending digital remittances to Nigeria is rapidly closing.
The new WorldRemit research reveals that the proportion of females sending digital money transfers to Nigeria via WorldRemit has grown by 10 percent within the last five years, and 37 percent of WorldRemit’s customers sending to Nigeria are female, compared to 27 percent in 2014.
The UN estimates that over 46% of Nigerian migrants are female, with the majority living in the United Kingdom and United States of America. Money sent from mothers, sisters and aunts living abroad help millions of families in Nigeria pay for essential needs such as healthcare and education.
Evidence suggests that, although female migrants tend to earn less than their male counterparts, they send a higher proportion of their income home more frequently.
Digital money transfer companies are improving the access that women have to remittances and helping their money go further. WorldRemit enables the Nigerian diaspora to send money home in a few taps from their phones without having to travel to an agent, lowering costs and increasing speed and convenience.
As WorldRemit celebrates International Women’s Day, the company is offering new customers zero fees on their first transfer to Nigeria if they use the code ACCESSBANK when making payment.
Pardon Mujakachi, Country Manager for Nigeria at WorldRemit, says: “Ensuring digital inclusion for financial services for women on both the send and receive side is critically important, as we know that when women thrive, families, businesses and local economies thrive too.
Our data shows that women play an increasingly vital role in Nigeria’s development by sending money home to support education, cover healthcare costs, make investments, and more. At WorldRemit, we’re committed to simplifying that process, and making it faster, cheaper and easier to send and receive remittances.”
Victor Etuokwu, Executive Director, Personal Banking, Access Bank, says: “At Access Bank, we are very passionate about women. Hence, we have products and services that are tailor-made for women because we recognize the importance of their role in the family and the society at large. We have now taken this a step further by partnering with WorldRemit, to ensure that women outside Nigeria can seamlessly remit money to their families or for their businesses back in Nigeria.
As industry leaders in the use of technology to provide financial services, we are delighted that sending and receiving money from anywhere across the world can now be done on our platforms without any glitches, within the shortest possible time.
WorldRemit customers complete over 1.3 million transfers every month from over 50 countries to over 145 destinations.
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