Folks can now free up their extra foreign change or remaining Singapore dollars at the new TravelersBox kiosks located at Singapore Changi Airport. TravelersBox helps you and fellow travellers convert their leftover foreign currency, including bills and coins, into digital money with favourite e-Gift cards (iTunes, JD.com, Grab, Tokpedia, Starbucks, Facebook) or e-wallet brands (PayPal and Baidu). You may also choose to use the money to make contributions to the Changi Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Changi Airport Group (CAG) that supports youth community efforts, or charities such as the Red Cross1. This way, money that would otherwise be kept in a jar of mixed coins and bills, is now of value again.
TravelersBox kiosks were first installed in Changi Airport in mid-December and in that time, there have been four times more transactions in Singapore than in the next best-performing airport. “Singapore Changi Airport is one of the largest transportation hubs in Asia and the world, and we are thrilled to be able to join an airport of this scale. We believe that this is a service that will be of great value to travellers here and we will continue to bring leading brands and companies on board as partners,” said Tomer Zussman, CEO and founder of TravelersBox.
TravelersBox was conceptualised when Tomer found himself with his pockets full of change each time he returned from his regular work trips to New York. He would often forget to bring the coins on his next trip and when he started to count the coins, he realised that he would usually accumulate an average of US$10 to US$15 each time. On doing a further market study, he found that on average, a tourist actually carries US$20 worth of loose change. With 1.5 billion travellers a year, he realised that this was an untapped market of potentially US$30 billion a year.
After trying to work with banks and credit card companies who were uninterested in micropayments, Tomer thought he could partner with e-wallets and e-Gift card merchants. He then founded the firm together with Idan Deshe to capitalise on this market gap.
There are eight kiosks located at Terminal 1 and 3 in the initial period which will accept nine currencies, namely Singapore Dollar, Thai Baht, Australian Dollar, Chinese Renminbi, Indonesian Rupiah, Hong Kong Dollar, Japanese Yen, Philippine Peso, Malaysian Ringgit. You will be able to change these currencies into credits with Amazon.ch, Amazon.jp, Facebook, Grab, iTunes, Lazada, Qoo10, Starbucks, Skype, Tokopedia, Viber, Changi Foundation, with more to come in the future.
To find out more about TravelersBox, please visit www.travelersbox.com
