← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · madrussian
Thread ID: 20445 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-09-29
2005-09-29 06:02 | User Profile
:alucard: :dung:
[url]http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/28/news/international/boa_fees.reut/index.htm[/url]
BoA scraps Mexico wire-transfer fees
Fee waiver should attract more business from Mexican workers as banks fight for Hispanic customers. September 28, 2005: 4:42 PM EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp. said Wednesday it has begun offering customers free wire transfers to Mexico, hoping to win more business from Mexican workers in the United States who wire cash home.
The rollout expands a program begun in January in Chicago. The fee waiver comes with a requirement that customers open checking accounts with the No. 2 U.S. bank, which is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
"Adding the free SafeSend feature to our checking accounts is our way of saying that we want to be the bank of choice [for Hispanics]," said Liam McGee, the bank's president of global consumer and small-business banking, in a statement.
The changes raise the stakes in U.S. banks' push to attract Hispanics, who this decade overtook blacks as the largest U.S. minority group. More than half of the roughly 40 million Hispanics in the United States are Mexicans.
Under the new Bank of America (down $0.32 to $41.60, Research) program, customers may identify up to three beneficiaries, and send up to $1,500 per remittance, with a maximum of $3,000 over a 30-day period.
About $13.3 billion was wired to Mexico in 2003, and remittances to Latin America probably exceeded $30 billion last year, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Bank of America said remittances to Mexico rose to $16.6 billion in 2004 and may reach $20 billion in 2005.
Britain's HSBC Holdings Plc (up $0.28 to $81.18, Research) and San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. (down $0.46 to $58.12, Research) have also cut fees or otherwise made it easier for people to wire money to Mexico. Another leading company in money transfers is First Data Corp.'s (up $0.10 to $40.53, Research) Western Union.
In June 2004 New York-based Citigroup Inc. (up $0.09 to $45.18, Research) issued what it called the first binational credit card for Mexican workers in the United States, and for family or friends at home.
2005-09-30 02:51 | User Profile
I guess the rest of us are just chopped liver.
2005-09-30 10:44 | User Profile
With every new private company and corporate 'cross-border' and bilingual initiative that springs up, and they do so at an alarming rate, the border between the States and third-world Mexico fades out of sight. If not on the actual map, then on the greater public consciousness and that I think will ultimately be much more devastating to any resistance to a pending and planned eventual removal of said border.
Houston, Travis, Fannin, Bowie and Crockett are rolling over in their graves and as I move about what was once my home town and witness the changing demographic scenery I find myself getting very, very angry at the reality of the situation. Problem is, no one else seems to care anymore, at least to the point of actually doing something about it.
It's a psychologically strange feeling to be a political and ideological exiled minority in your own native land.