Travelex—a global specialist in retail foreign exchange—has opened its first store in Macau at the AIA Tower on Macau peninsula. The new venue is handily situated for tourists visiting Macau’s architectural and cultural heritage in the old town district, and for business visitors.
UK-based Travelex began trading in 1976 and now has 1,000 stores in 25 jurisdictions. They include 20 in the People’s Republic of China, and 35 in Hong Kong SAR—20 of those at Hong Kong International Airport.
The new Macau store will trade in more than 15 major currencies says the company. Currency exchange booths inside Macau casinos tend to stock a wider variety of currencies than Macau’s existing street exchange vendors—who mainly trade in Chinese renminbi, Hong Kong dollars and Macau patacas. But a significant segment of the local population—including Macau government officers and government administrators—are not allowed to enter casino floors except during specially-designated times such as the Chinese New Year holidays. Until the arrival of Travelex such people seeking say euros or pounds sterling were required to order their currency days or even weeks in advance from local banks. On a number of occasions in the past 12 months, local banks have actually run out of euros for exchange customers—possibly because of the strong demand from the Portuguese population of Macau travelling back to Europe during holiday periods. As patacas are non-convertible on international markets, anyone paid in MOP must either exchange them for hard currency before leaving the territory or run the risk of incurring significant charges when using automated teller machines while overseas.
Travelex says it hopes to open more stores in Macau. Peter Jackson, Chief Executive Officer of Travelex—who flew over for the opening ceremony—told Inside Asian Gaming: “We need to see how this first store performs. Early indications are very good. We’ve also got to see if we can find suitable locations to open more stores. Our guys have got a good pipeline of those. We can accelerate or decelerate our roll out depending on how we do.
“We have a very strong team that runs our Asia Pacific business. I know that ever since I joined the business two years ago, Macau has been on the list of opportunities. We’re growing our business around the world. It’s getting the focus on these things that’s sometimes required. But the team here have done a tremendous job in making it happen. It takes time to explain our business to the regulator and how we conduct our business so that they are supportive.”
Macau does now have internationally-recognised anti-money laundering protocols and financial transaction reporting standards in place, but has not always received a positive press around the world regarding its financial probity.
“We take a very simple view on this at Travelex,” explains Peter Jackson.
“Our blue and red logo is whiter than white when it comes to financial probity. One of the things I discuss when I meet the regulators around the world—whether with the US Federal Reserve or any of the other central banks—is that they look to Travelex to bring our ‘gold standard’ to the markets we’re operating in. I know that people actively endorse and encourage Travelex to come into the markets, because it actually lifts and raises the standards of all the participants in a market. We look to do that everywhere we work. The Monetary Authority of Macao has been hugely supportive. You saw them here today. We couldn’t have done this without them. And we’re very appreciative of what they’ve done.”
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