Egypt announced a record $47.3 billion in remittances. It did not say what sending it cost.

On 20 August Egypt’s central bankTermCentral bank×البنك المركزيThe government's bank, which controls the money supply, sets interest rates, and oversees all other banks in the country.Open the term said Egyptians working abroad had sent home about $47.3 billion in the year to June. A record, up almost 30% on the year before.

A year ago the World Bank priced five Gulf routes into Egypt: from Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. On a $500 transfer the averages ran from 2.02% out of Kuwait to 4.54% out of Qatar.

Put Kuwait’s price on the whole $47.3 billion and moving the money costs about a billion dollars a year. That is roughly a week of what Egyptians abroad send home. At Qatar’s price it is more than two billion.

The fee is not the whole cost

Every transfer is priced twice. There is the fee, on the counter and in the app. Then there is the exchange rateTermForeign exchange×الصرف الأجنبيThe market where one currency is traded for another, at a rate that changes constantly based on supply and demand.Open the term you are given. Set it against the rate the two currencies trade at between banks and the gap is a second price, charged on everything you send.

That rate is public and takes a minute to find. Egypt’s central bank publishes the market average. The dirham is peggedTermCurrency peg×ربط العملةA fixed exchange rate between a local currency and another, usually the dollar, so the rate does not move with market supply and demand.Open the term to the dollar, so one dirham is worth about 13.87 Egyptian pounds.

Send AED 1,835, which is what the World Bank’s $500 comes to. On this route’s average the fee is AED 29. The exchange rate takes AED 10 more, and that ten is the part nobody quotes. It is a quarter of what the transfer cost you.

One counter can be much more lopsided than the average. Western Union’s agent branches charged AED 21 in fees and took AED 33.76 on the rate. The invisible part was 1.6 times the visible one.

Sixteen products, 0.50% to 6.49%

That 2.14% average covers sixteen products from nine firms, several of them listed more than once. Each is counted once, whether thousands of people use it or nobody does, so the average describes the market rather than your transfer.

What sixteen ways of sending AED 1,835 from the UAE to Egypt cost%

Chart data table

Category	Total cost
DirectRemit	0.50
Al Fardan	1.04
Al Fardan	1.04
Al Fardan	1.04
Lari	1.38
Lari	1.38
Al Ansari	1.50
Wall St	1.56
Al Ansari	1.58
Al Ansari	1.58
Western Union	1.74
MoneyGram	1.97
Dahabshiil	2.26
Western Union	2.98
Wise	6.12
Wise	6.49

The cheapest was DirectRemit, Emirates NBD’s online transfer, at 0.50%. It charged no fee at all, so the whole cost was the exchange rate. The dearest were Wise’s two online transfers, at 6.12% and 6.49%, and there it ran the other way. On the dearer one the fee was AED 118.85 and the rate cost 18 fils. Three of Al Fardan’s services came in at 1.04% and three of Al Ansari’s at 1.50% and 1.58%.

The amount changes it too. Fees are mostly a fixed number of dirhams and margins are always a percentage. The same sixteen products averaged 3.70% on the $200 test amount and 2.14% on the $500 one. A cost given as a percentage, with no amount attached, tells you nothing.

NOUQUD’s remittance-cost calculator asks for four things: what you send, the fee, the rate you were quoted and the rate the market is trading at. Put in AED 1,835, a fee of AED 29.08, and the rate your own counter gave you against 13.87. It shows what the transfer cost you, and how much of that the rate took.