Remittances: Digitalisierung als Ausweg aus der Schattenwirtschaft?

This article focuses on the impact of the digitization of remittances, a topic that has been overshadowed by issues of global finance. Every year, mil-lions of migrants send money to family and friends in their home coun-tries. By 2022, remittances will amount to more than $647 billion—three times the amount of official development assistance. To send money, mi-grants use either informal channels or channels provided by private com-panies, such as banks and money transfer operators, that charge high fees or require long waits. To understand remittances, I argue that cross-border monetary transactions involve inequalities that are more akin to the mobili-ty of people or goods than to the transfer of communication data. Against this background, this article examines how digital technologies can be used to bring remittances out of the shadow economy. It also analyzes the emer-gence of new informalities as a result of digitization.