I was in the Dominican Republic when I got a call from my friend experiencing homelessness.

He had been fighting a pill addiction and had an opportunity to go to rehab. This particular rehab center was really hard to get into. So hard, that when you got the call that you’re in, you had to show up within 24 hours or they called the next person.

My friend was contacting me because he needed gas money for his truck in order to make the 1 hr drive to the rehab center. He also wanted some lunch. He didn’t have a dollar to his name. So he called me to ask for some.

Being overseas in the DR, it wasn’t like I could just swing by and hand him cash. I asked if I could Venmo him, or Zell, or Cash App, or… you get the picture.

Problem was, my friend was part of the “underbanked” sector. Meaning he didn’t have a bank account for me to send funds to.

Bank accounts required knowing your identity - and he didn’t exactly want to be sharing his identity and big brother keeping track of his expenses.

And so what did I do? How did I get my friend the funds for him to check himself into rehab?

I ended up wiring him $100 through Western Union. But it cost me a total of $125. So I paid a 25% markup to send funds to someone semi-anonymously.

I’m in an extremely fortunate position. My day to day didn’t change as a result of the $25. I was on vacation in the Caribbean after all.

But I thought a lot about others… all the immigrants who need to send funds to their family back home. To their grandmother who needed funds to cook rice and beans that night, or the single mom sister trying to keep her kid in school.