The biggest travel-related financial services firm, Thomas Cook, has recently signed a contract with Saraswat Co-operative Bank to offer its international money transfer service throughout all of the bank’s branches.

Saraswat Bank, India’s leading co-operative savings bank, has a total asset of more than Rs22,000 crore. The bank has an interconnected network of over 200 branches – spreading across Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi. With the new tie up, all of Saraswat Bank’s clients will be able to use the fund transfer service MoneyGram offered by Thomas Cook.

Madhavan Menon, Managing Director of Thomas Cook-India, said that the partnership is in line with the company’s goal to expand its network worldwide. For the past eight years, MoneyGram has now over 22,000 participating agent locations across the country. He told that Thomas Cook’s fund transfer service is duly approved by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank.

Meanwhile, MoneyGram’s Regional Director for South Asia, Harsh Lambah, said that India is one of the world’s largest remittance markets, providing huge opportunity for MoneyGram. He told that receiving money transmittal via MoneyGram service is quite easy. What the receiver needs to do is just find a MoneyGram agent, fill up the receipt form and provide any identification card. Lambah added that transferring money using the service will only take about 10 minutes.