O.C. Money Wiring Services Cash In on the Devalued Peso : Trends: Orders to transmit funds to Mexico are flooding in. Technological advances have made process cheaper, more reliable.

SANTA ANA — Socrates Galindo doesn’t like to wire money to Mexico. He prefers to take a check with him so that he can buy gifts and give them in person when he visits his family in Acapulco.

But the 32-year-old Galindo, who works at an antique store in Laguna Beach, has changed his custom of late. His younger brother, Alejandro, is having a birthday soon, so Galindo sent a few dollars for the celebration. Because U.S. currency goes such a long way in Mexico these days, Galindo’s contribution will allow his family to throw a first-rate birthday party.

The recent devaluation of the Mexican peso has triggered a boom in the amount of money being wired from California to Mexico, which was already the No. 1 destination for dollars sent to other countries from the state.

Also fueling the growth of the money wiring industry is new technology that makes the process cheaper, faster and more secure. First Data Corp., an Omaha, Neb., data processing company that offers a money wiring product called MoneyGram, estimates that the industry has been growing at 15% a year in the 1990s as an alternative to sending money orders by mail.

Arnoldo Davalos, president of Fiesta X-Change Inc. in Santa Ana, said that orders for wire transfers to Mexico have been pouring in during the past couple of weeks as people with relatives there scramble to take advantage of the exchange rate.

“Everybody realizes this is a good time to send money,” Davalos said, “because, although they devalued the peso, prices have remained stable. So their families can buy more food, clothes or whatever.”

The amount of money sent by wire from California had already more than doubled from $504.4 million in 1990 to $1.3 billion in 1993, according to the California Department of State Banking. And money transfer agents confirm that the practice has definitely caught on.

For years, it has been a custom among Mexicans living in the United States to share their dollars with relatives in the old country. Some Mexican families have come to rely on the supplements to get by.

Beyond the family unit, some Mexican municipalities have offered incentives for expatriates to contribute to the economic development of the communities they left behind. Zacatecas, a state in central Mexico, began a program in 1988 to match every dollar contributed by Mexicans living abroad for community projects.

The program was successful enough that it was extended to the states of Jalisco, Michoacan and Oaxaca, which also have large migrant populations.

Guillermo Jordan, manager of Supermail International’s Santa Ana office, said that he has been flooded with orders for wire transfers to Mexico in recent weeks.

“We are receiving calls every day from people asking how much we were paying for the peso in Mexico,” he said.

Also, Jordan said, many of his regular customers have increased the size of their regular remittances. “People who normally send $100 are sending $200 instead,” he said, “because they know their money is worth more now down there.”

Wiring money to Mexico is much easier now than in recent years, said Jaime Nogami, a licensed nurse’s assistant who has lived in the United States since the mid-1980s.

Because mail may be delayed or lost, wiring money has always been preferable, but it was still unreliable, said Nogami, a 29-year-old Santa Ana resident who sends money every month to his parents and grandparents in Mexico.

Until recently, he said, his mother and grandmother would have to travel across expansive Mexico City to find out which of the local telegraph offices had received Nogami’s wire transfer.

“They would go to the telegraph office near their house, and it wouldn’t be there. So they would send them to another telegraph office. It took them days just to figure out where to go,” Nogami said.

Now, though, the two big names in money wiring--First Data and Western Union--have their agents in the United States and abroad connected by a personal computer network. Cutting out the middleman--the Mexican telegraph service, for example--has made transmission cheaper. And computers and satellites have made it more reliable.

When Nogami sends his relatives money now, he said, “all they do is go to any branch of their bank in any city in Mexico, and they can pick it up right away.”

Computers have revolutionized the business for small money transmitters as well. Even a mom-and-pop service needs only a personal computer, a modem and the approval of the bank to make direct deposits into a consumer account in a foreign country in a matter of minutes.

Fiesta X-Change, for example, has agreements with both Banamex and Bancomer, two of Mexico’s largest financial institutions. That arrangement has proved to be a profitable one. The company has expanded its number of offices from one to seven in the past two years.

Jordan said that 98% of transmissions from Supermail’s Santa Ana office go to Mexico. But the improved technology is resulting in more money being sent to other Latin American countries too.

Julio Alvarez, a native of El Salvador, said that money wiring service to his homeland has historically been only a little more reliable than mail. But now, said the 30-year-old mechanic, the money he sends to his relatives arrives at their San Salvador bank the next day.

“I like the security of it,” said Alvarez, who lives in Santa Ana. “It costs a little more, but it is safer than the mail.”

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Long-Distance Money

First Data Corp. and Western Union, the giants of the U.S. money wiring industry, are seeing increased business resulting from the devaluation of the Mexican peso and technological advances making the process faster and cheaper. Smaller money transmitters are seeing benefits, too. Here is how their prices compare for sending $300 from Southern California to Mexico City:

First Data MoneyGram: $10

Continental Currency Transfers Inc.: $10

Fiesta X-Change Inc.: $15

Western Union: $27

Cash Exodus

Money wire transfers from California more than doubled between 1990 and 1993, the most recent year for which information is available. Amounts of money wired annually out of state, in millions of dollars:

1990: $504.4

1991: $751.8

1992: $973.8

1993: $1,276.1

Sources: Individual companies, California Department of State Banking, Times reports; Researched by VALERIE WILLIAMS-SANCHEZ / Los Angeles Times