The state-owned Romanian Post recently launched a money transfer service that allows Romanians who work abroad to send money to their relatives in the country. The main feature of this service, which is called Money Home Delivery, is that the postman will deliver the money  to the recipient’s home, the company announced on September 24.

With this service, Posta Romana enters a market that has been dominated so far by large international money transfer services, such as Western Union and MoneyGram. These traditional money transfers require the recipient of the money to go to a bank unit or any other location where Western Union or MoneyGram services are available.

The fee for money wire using the Romanian Post’s service start from RON 10 (EUR 2.26) for sums of up to RON 200 (EUR 45), plus a EUR 0.5 flat fee for the PrioriPay platform. This is because the service uses the PrioriPay money transfer platform which Posta Romana launched in July this year.

The sender will open an account on the PrioriPay platform and will feed the account using either his card or his current account. He will then select the “Home Delivery” money transfer option and introduce the name of the receiver and his address. The data will then be processed by the Romanian Post office which will deliver the money to the recipient. It may take 48 hours for transfers to urban residents and up to 72 hours for transfers to people in rural areas, according to the description of the service.

Romanian telecom operators are also trying to get a share of the money transfer market. Vodafone is currently pushing its mobile money transfer service M-Pesa, which was launched in Romania in March this year. However, this service also requires the recipient of the money to go to an M-Pesa agent.

This makes the service launched by the Romanian Post one of a kind on the local market. The post has had the money transfer service via postal mandate for years and in recent years this was updated and improved as e-mandat, which is an electronic money transfer service. Both the traditional mandate and the e-mandat service are with home delivery, but they required the sender to go to a postal office. This is no longer needed with the new PrioriPay service.

Romanian Post is currently owned by the state, but the Government plans to privatize it by next year. The state is waiting for offers from interested investors until September 30, 2014.

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com