A major convenience retailer with hundreds of sites in Australia and the US approached Cullinan to tap into the growing money transfer market. Given the rise of global migration, they wanted to help their customers to send money overseas with more ease.
A major convenience retailer with hundreds of sites in Australia and the US approached Cullinan to tap into the growing money transfer market. Given the rise of global migration, they wanted to help their customers to send money overseas with more ease.
Remittance is risky business for convenience retailers with geographically dispersed stores and operators. The market is highly regulated and serious fines can be issued to retailers that don’t meet their requirements. The losses from fraud can also be great.
Money Transfers are also time-consuming. Customers often have to fill out paper forms at the counter and then the operator runs finance, fraud, and compliance checks. As a result, convenience stores need highly skilled people to conduct complex remittance transactions.
Imagine trying to process a money transfer and run ID checks with a growing queue of people expecting to shop and pay in a matter of minutes. Then consider the risk of human error across hundreds of stores in different regions with different compliance requirements.
The convenience retailer approached Cullinan to digitally transform their entire remittance process so that it involved less risk and counter time. Making money transfers more convenient could also increase the number of transactions conducted per day and bring more people in-store.
So, they implemented Cullinan: a centralised compliance, operator support, and risk management system that integrates with RIA, Western Union, and MoneyGram - three of the biggest players in the money transfer business.
Cullinan gives POS operators step-by-step prompts to follow during money transfers and enables customers to self-serve. Customers can now walk into a store, fill out a form on a mobile device or in-store kiosk, and be issued a barcode.
Operators scan the barcode at the counter and are guided through ID checks and money collection via the supplier's interface at their existing point of sale.
The money is sent to the money transfer provider and ten minutes later it’s available for collection overseas.
A recipient customer can also take a barcode to the counter, after filling out a form on their mobile phone. The operator can quickly pay cash out from the till or a pre-paid card is automatically activated for higher amounts.
Both send and receive transactions are processed on the POS as a normal product item for the retailer.
The customer experience is seamless, but the real magic happens in compliance automation and risk management.
Cullinan now runs risk checks on all transactions as they’re happening using a pre-defined set of rules and behaviour patterns. If a compliance or risk rule is about to be broken, Cullinan will stop the transaction in its tracks. If the system picks up on operator fraud, then the reference number is held so that the customer has to call Cullinan’s help desk and run checks on the transaction before they can access the money.
The convenience retailer could offer more, simply by switching Cullinan on. They have tapped into the world’s major money transfer providers, streamlined the customer and operator experience, automated compliance, and reduced risk across their entire store network. There were also zero production issues and all point-of-sale integrations were soon migrated to Cullinan. The offering was expanded via a similar model to include bill payments, check cashing, and over a thousand other digital products.
“Speed and reliability have always been key elements of the convenience retail value proposition. They are also important to money transfer customers. Cullinan completely transformed the process and addressed our key success factors: make it faster, easier, and safer for our customers to send money at any time of the day or night.” - Former Chief Financial Officer - Major Retailer.
