Social Media With Morals

When you think of Social Media and its uses, chances are, you’re not thinking about helping the needy first and foremost. Sure, the viral aspects of social media do allow charities to do ridiculously well, as campaigns such as #NoMakeUpSelfie and of course, Stephen’s Story have taught us. But even with that in mind, you’d be forgiven of thinking predominantly of social media as platforms where people share their narcissistic rants, images and chat with their friends across the world.

Azimo, the money transfer company, wants to use social media – specifically Facebook – as a channel to directly impact those in developing countries. They have begun revolutionising the financial industry to benefit some of the world’s pooresr countries, where people will often leave to earn more money elsewhere. At present, money is being sent back to home to benefit their families, but this is usually done in a costly manner, for example, through high street banks with lots of charges. Azimo is making remittances that much easier and – crucially – cheaper.

Azimo says it will never use branches, and exists solely online, something which enables costs to remain low. Such unnecessary costs would go against their moral ethos of which they are so proud. Now that they’ve teamed up with Facebook, as the infographic shows, there is a direct correlation between social media use and remittances. The Facebook market aligns so closely with the niche of people sending money overseas to help loved ones back home.

Just as Facebook connects users worldwide, Azimo can now be closer to its aims of doing the same. After all, both seek to end feelings of isolation and being connected from family and friends in physically estranged locations.

If this works as well as it should, Facebook and Azimo could very well be on course to change the face of the industry – and even humanity – for the better.