How remittance fees work

The two parts of the price

The transfer fee is the charge the provider quotes for the transfer. The World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide (RPW) database records it in the currency of the sending country ⁵.

The exchange rate margin is the second part. The World Bank describes it as the exchange rate spread, which is not quoted in the transfer fee ⁴. A provider can charge a low fee and a wide margin, or the reverse. Senders see the full price only by adding both ².

An example from RPW: in Q3 2025, sending US$200 from the United States to Kenya carried an average fee of US$4.64 and an average exchange rate margin of 1.94% ⁵. RPW put the average total cost at 4.26%, or US$8.52 ⁵.

How the World Bank measures total cost

RPW collects the total cost of each service split into two parts, the transfer fee and the foreign exchange margin ². Researchers gather the prices by posing as customers and contacting firms in each corridor ⁴.

Each corridor is priced for two amounts, the local currency equivalent of US$200 and the local currency equivalent of US$500 ⁴. The World Bank says the data are a snapshot of a moment in time ⁴. The database covers flows from 48 sending countries to 105 receiving countries, in 367 corridors ⁴.

The headline global figure is a simple average. For Q3 2025 it was 6.36% ². RPW publishes a global weighted average beside it, which was 5.04% in Q3 2025 ².

The SDG 10.c target

UN Sustainable Development Goal target 10.c reads: by 2030, reduce to less than 3 per cent the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent ³.

The indicator used to track it, 10.c.1, is remittance costs as a proportion of the amount remitted ³. The World Bank report says the UN SDGs and the G20 set a 3% target for the global average by 2030 ².

Latest averages

These are the RPW figures for sending US$200, from the Q3 2025 report ².

Costs by region and type of provider

The report says Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most expensive region to send money to ². Of the 13 corridors with costs above 20% in Q3 2025, nine originate in Sub-Saharan Africa ². The lowest-cost receiving region was the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, at 5.11% ².

By type of provider, banks averaged 14.99% in Q3 2025 ². Money transfer operators averaged 4.72% and post offices 5.58% ². The report says the average cost of sending US$200 through mobile operators has been fluctuating around 3 percent over time, until recently ². The report text gives two statements about the Q3 2025 mobile operator figure that do not match, so this page does not list one ².