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.
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.
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 322 corridors. 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 We review every guide against the live RPW data each time the World Bank publishes a new quarter, and outdated claims are refreshed rather than archived.