Salvadoran immigrant Aresenio Ayala walked past the Western Union outlet on Mount Pleasant Road last week and stopped instead at Mi Pueblo, where he sent money to a relative in San Salvador. He said he decided to give the company a try after he saw a flier in the neighborhood.
"They charge less than Western Union," he said, and Mi Pueblo's agent in El Salvador is near his family in San Salvador.
After Atsumasa Tochisako retired, he raised $3 million and founded MicroFinance.
(Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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Mi Pueblo, which has offices in Adams Morgan and Wheaton, is one of a number of institutions that sees a growing business in the $32 billion flowing from U.S. immigrants to their families in Latin America.
Western Union, U.S. and Latin American banks, and some credit unions have targeted this business, attracted by the substantial money-transfer fees.
Those fees have likewise caused some Hispanic advocacy groups and Latin American economic development institutions to urge nonprofit groups to take a larger role, an effort to lower the costs for immigrants of sending money to relatives back home.
One of those who has embraced the model of using nonprofit groups is Atsumasa Tochisako, a former senior official of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd. Tochisako, who is fluent in Spanish, was first sent to Mexico 25 years ago by the Bank of Tokyo. He returned years later and worked as the bank's general representative in Latin America from 1988 until 2000.
After Tochisako, 51, retired, he raised $3 million from Japanese banker friends and formed District-based MicroFinance International Corp. The bankers received equity stakes in the company based on the size of their investments.
MicroFinance opened the two local Mi Pueblo money transfer stations last year and plans to open 48 more offices over the next three years.
When Salvadoran immigrants want to transfer money to family back home, they take the cash to the storefront offices in Wheaton or Adams Morgan. MicroFinance charges $6 to send as much as $150 and $9 to send between $150 and $2,000.
MicroFinance does not have offices in El Salvador but instead uses a network of about 30 nonprofit lenders there. The immigrant's relatives can immediately go to any of those offices and pick up the money transferred to them.
