The Path to Pesos: French fintech Tempo France and Spain’s Elsa.care to launch remittances to the Philippines

The cash corridor between Spain and the Philippines comes at an opportune time given the size of remittances received by the Southeast Asian country.

French fintech Tempo France and Spanish payments startup Elsa.care have teamed up to launch remittance services to the Philippines. Armenotech, a Cyprus-based blockchain startup targeting the payments industry, will execute the project and integrate the two platforms on the Stellar blockchain. Stellar is the first blockchain built from the ground up with a focus on money transfers and a non-profit organization.

The remittance corridor between Spain and the Philippines comes at an opportune time given the size of remittances received by the Southeast Asian country. According to the country’s central bank, the Philippines incurred remittances of over $31 billion, a five percent increase since 2020.

Tempo France CEO Alla Zhedik is encouraged by the growth the Philippines promises. Zhedik, who has over 16 years of experience in the banking and finance industry, was previously CFO of Wari Pay, another French fintech.

“The Philippines is a special segment of the remittance market in Southeast Asia and the Pacific,” she noted. “This segment will grow at a rate of 7 to 10 percent annually.”

In fact, remittances flowing through Philippine banks rose 3.8% year-on-year to $2.84 billion in September this year. And globally, the transaction value of digital transfers is expected to show an annual growth rate of 8.13 percent, totaling USD 177.70 billion by 2027.

And Spain is among the top 10 destinations for Filipino emigrants – accounting for 0.65 percent – ​​over 16,000 migrants – of the entire emigrant population in 2019.

“People should be able to send money to their loved ones, fully relying on transparency, reliability, high security and easy payment,” Zhedik said.

And it is with this spirit that Tempo France collaborates with Elsa.care. The two-year-old Spanish startup Elsa.care offers migrant workers commission-free services and money transfers. And for Tempo France, the partnership is an opportunity to open a new sales channel, Zhedik said.

Founded in 2008 by Canadian entrepreneur Anthony Barker and American fintech entrepreneur Jeffrey Phaneuf, Tempo France is a Paris-based European Stellar blockchain payments platform. The company offers online, offline and digitally supported transfers to nearly 100 destination countries with over 300 physical agent locations.

The agreement with Elsa care follows Tempo France’s series of global tie-ups. Last month, the company announced an agreement with American fintech Orokii, which offers P2P and B2B payment solutions across national borders. The collaboration will further facilitate a better payment system between Europe and the USA.

Tempo also has active blockchain partners Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.