What sending money home actually costs

There are two prices, and you are shown one

Every transfer has a fee, and the fee is advertised. Every transfer also converts your money at a rate the provider chooses, and that rate is not the one you would find if you looked up the currency pair. The difference between the two is the second price, and it is the part no provider quotes upfront.

Send 5,000 at a fee of 25, on a quoted rate of 47.5 when the mid-market rate is 49. The fee costs 25. The rate costs 152.30. The total is 177.30, and six sevenths of it is the part that was never quoted.

The two prices in every 5,000 sent Plays on its own

1

You send 5,000. That is the amount you hand over.

2

The fee costs 25. It is the price on the poster, the one every provider quotes.

3

The rate costs about 152. It is the second price, the part no provider quotes upfront.

4

What lands is about 4,823 of the 5,000 you sent, once both prices are taken out.

← Back to the walkthrough

Play again

WHAT YOU SEND

5,000.

THE FEE

−25.

THE RATE

−152.

Whether that holds for you depends on how much you send, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion. A fee is fixed; a margin is a percentage. On those same terms the two are equal at about 842 sent. Below that the advertised fee is the bigger half — send 300 and the fee of 25 is three times the 8.42 the rate takes. Above it the unquoted price wins, and it wins by more with every unit added.

So the rule is not that the rate is always the larger price. It is that the rate becomes the larger price the moment you send anything substantial, and almost nobody sending money home is sending 300.

The tool asks for the mid-market rate, which is the one number nobody hands you. Treat it as a diagnosis rather than a decision: it tells you how much of what you paid was never quoted, and a search or a 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 reference gets you close enough for that. The decision itself does not need it at all — comparing what actually lands, across two or three services on the same day, requires no reference rate.

Why a free transfer can be the expensive one

A service charging no fee still needs to make money somewhere, and 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 is the usual place. That means a free transfer can convert your money at a worse rate than a service charging an open fee, and end up costing you more. The fee by itself does not tell you which provider pays out more.

This is why comparing advertised fees ranks providers in an order that has little to do with what arrives. The only comparison that means anything is the amount that lands in the other account, from the same amount sent, on the same day.

It has been getting cheaper, and not everywhere

The World Bank publishes the average total cost of sending $200 through every provider it surveys, in each corridor. That cost has fallen almost everywhere it tracks, and Lebanon is the exception. Lebanon’s transfers still cost roughly sixty percent more than Egypt’s, for the same amount sent in the same year.

What it costs to send $200 home, as a share of the amount%

Chart data table

Category	To Lebanon	To Jordan	To Egypt
2016	10.26	5.66	5.28
2017	8.62	6.02	6.22
2018	6.83	4.47	4.30
2019	6.91	3.97	4.91
2020	6.63	4.06	4.71
2021	5.93	4.45	4.77
2022	6.96	3.91	3.93
2023	5.28	3.35	3.30

Sending into Egypt cost 6.22% in 2017 and 3.30% in 2023. Jordan followed the same path, from 6.02% to 3.35%. Lebanon began at 10.26%, higher than either has ever been, and is still at 5.28% — above where Egypt and Jordan were before the fall started.

A household sending into Lebanon therefore pays roughly sixty percent more than one sending into Egypt, on the same transfer, in the same year. That is not a fee anyone quotes either. It is the average of what the market there charges, and it is the reason the comparison is worth doing before the transfer rather than after.

Two things about that figure are worth holding. It is an average across providers, so the cheapest service in a corridor is below it and the dearest well above — the number describes the market, not your transfer. And it is measured at $200, which sits on the small-amount side of the crossover above, where the fixed fee still carries much of the cost. Send meaningfully more than that and your own split tilts further towards the rate than the published average suggests.

What to do about it

Ask the provider to state the landed amount, the number that will actually reach the other account. A provider that will not quote it before you commit is quoting you only one of the two prices.

Treat that quoted amount as a ceiling rather than a promise. A transfer that passes through a correspondent institution on the way can be charged again by it, and the receiving bank may take its own charge at the other end — which is why the figure your family reports back is sometimes smaller than the one you were given, without anyone having lied to you. Ask whether the quote is the amount that lands or the amount that is sent onward.

Then compare that landed amount across two or three services on the same day, for the amount you actually send. Rates move, so a comparison from last month is a different question.

And send less often in larger amounts wherever the fee is fixed. That is the same crossover from the first section read the other way: four transfers of 1,000 pay the fixed fee four times, while one transfer of 4,000 pays it once — and the rate takes the same shareTermStock×السهمA share of ownership in a company, bought and sold on a stock exchange, that may pay dividends and rise or fall in value.Open the term either way. The saving is the fee you did not pay three times, which is the one part of this that is arithmetic rather than shopping.