THE Central Bank this week granted a Russian money transfer company a license to go ahead with its operation on the island.
Unistream established the new company, Unistream Cyprus Limited in December of 2005. The head office of Unistream Cyprus is in Nicosia.
Since then the company started preparation activity and an application had been lodged immediately with the Central Bank, a company press release said.
On Tuesday the company received word its license had been granted and said it was planning to start its business activity on the island within two months.
“Unistream is expanding as an international company. We sign new deals with foreign partners and the number of service points around the world is growing increasingly,” Souren Hayriyan, the CEO for Unistream, said.
“Getting the license in Cyprus is an important step in establishing the company as a dynamic world money transfers business. We consider Cyprus as a very promising country with a lot of tourists and foreign workers residing in the island. Besides that, Cyprus is a very important stage to enter the EU’s market.”
Constantinos Tsaggaris, director of Unistream Cyprus said that getting the license was recognition of Unistream as a solid money transfer network internationally.
“Getting the license was not an easy task. We had to supply a lot of documents to the Central Bank of Cyprus and our colleagues in the Central Bank studied the documents carefully before we were issued the license.”
Tsaggaris said that in Cyprus, Unistream would follow its exclusive strategy of inexpensive, convenient, reliable and fast money transfer services.
“I am sure we are be able to offer very competitive services to the customers and will successfully compete on the Cyprus market,” he said.
The tariffs are going to be from 2.5 per cent.
Hayriyan said the company plans to set up its service points throughout Cyprus, including Nicosia and Limassol.
Unistream is a Moscow-headquartered international money transfers system with over 22,000 service points around the world. In 2005, the system’s turnover reached $760 million, in the first half of 2006 the amount of transactions has reached $630 million. The system plans to step up turnover to $2 billion in 2006.
