Guides · World Bank RPW
Remittance guides
Plain-language, data-backed guides to help you send money internationally for less, how fees really work, why they vary, and the cheapest routes to the biggest corridors.
- 377
- Corridors published
- 7.3%
- Tracked average cost
- 7
- Guides in this set
What these guides answer
Across 377 World Bank RPW corridors we publish, the mean surveyed total cost is 7.3% - the cheapest surveyed route sits at 0.3%.
- 7.3%
- Tracked mean total cost
- 0.3%
- Cheapest: Malaysia to Myanmar
- 3%
- UN SDG 10.c target
- 7
- Guides in this hub
Survey figures are historical $200 total-cost observations (fee + FX margin), not live quotes.
How Much Does It Cost to Send Money Internationally?
A comprehensive breakdown of international money transfer fees, including service fees, exchange rate margins, and how costs vary by corridor.
Cheapest Ways to Send Money to Mexico
The US-Mexico corridor is the world's largest. Compare fintech services, banks, and cash transfer options to find the best rate.
Cheapest Ways to Send Money to Philippines
Philippines receives over $36B in remittances annually. Here's how to minimize fees and maximize what your family receives.
Why Are Remittance Fees So High?
Despite fintech disruption, many corridors still charge 8-15%. Understand the structural reasons behind high remittance costs.
Understanding Remittance Fees: A Complete Guide
Service fees, exchange rate margins, correspondent bank charges, everything you need to know to compare transfer costs accurately.
How Exchange Rates Affect Remittances
Mid-market rates, FX margins, and volatility: how the hidden exchange-rate spread shapes what recipients actually get.
Digital vs Traditional Money Transfer
How delivery methods and pricing models differ by route, compare historical survey observations, not marketing claims.
The advertised fee is the question the provider wants you to answer. What actually matters is what reaches the recipient in local currency, measured against the rate the banks themselves quote each other.
Next on PlainRemit
Turn the fee lesson into a corridor check
Start with how remittance fees work, then open the corridor cost data for your route. The FX rate guide shows how to read mid-market rates before you compare live quotes. For high-volume destinations, see the Mexico corridor guide and Philippines corridor guide. Every figure comes from World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide quarterly surveys, the same panel G20 finance ministries use for SDG 10.c.1.
Methodology
Every guide on PlainRemit is built from the same data foundation: the World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide (RPW) Database, which benchmarks money-transfer costs quarterly across 377 corridors published here. Costs are standardized as a percentage of a $200 transfer amount and include both the service fee charged by the provider and the exchange-rate margin, the gap between the provider's quoted rate and the interbank mid-rate.
Each guide answers a specific sender question ("What is the cheapest way to send to Mexico?", "Why are fees so high?") using the underlying RPW panel rather than marketing claims from individual providers. Where a guide cites a global or per-corridor average, that figure is drawn from the most recent RPW release available at the time of publication, and we date-stamp each article so readers can verify freshness.
Our data-framing benchmarks reference the UN Sustainable Development Goal 10.c target to reduce average remittance costs below 3% by 2030, which lets us flag corridors that are already affordable against those that still carry double-digit percentage costs. We review every guide against the live RPW data each time the World Bank publishes a new quarter, and outdated claims are refreshed rather than archived.
Download the corridor cost extract cited on this page: remittance-corridor-costs.csv (World Bank RPW · CC0).