It is also interesting to note that Bill Gate is an investor at http://researchgate.net/ whose mission is to connect researchers and make it easy for them to share and access scientific output, knowledge, and expertise
Hey! Don't hesitate to contact me when you launch. We have a comparison website for money transfer services. We love to feature new services (specially around mobile money)- www.tawipay.com
Hawala and other informal networks are accounted for 40% of the remittances sent every year.[1] USD 534 billion were sent in 2012 via formal networks.
Analyzing the remittances flow and their impact in the receiving countries (often more in term of %GDP than official intl development aid), it's a shame that the global average fee to "remit" is 9% and up to 12% while sending money towards Sub-Saharan Africa. [2]
But that's a fast moving market with several technological and business model innovations (and some YC startups too.
This last years, we have seen a lot of startups with interesting ideas based on new technologies or new business model to improve the remittances market:
Azimo (http://azimo.com), Xoom (https://www.xoom.com/), Regalii (https://www.regalii.com/ - send good instead of cash, YC), Transferwise (http://transferwise.com) and new technology like mobile banking (M-Pesa, MTNMMO) and bitcoin (buttercoin YC - http://buttercoin.com/).
Disclaimer: I work on TawiPay (http://tawipay.com) as a side-project, a comparison website for remittances services.