Banks cost 1.44× more than apps to send money abroad
By Akif Hazarvi · Data as of 21 June 2026 · Updated every 6 hours from live provider quotes
The finding: Across 98 currency corridors, sending $1,000 through a traditional bank costs 3.23% on average once the exchange-rate markup and fees are counted — versus 2.23% through a specialist money-transfer app. That makes banks roughly 1.44× more expensive. On the same corridor, a bank delivers 2.75% less money on average than the cheapest specialist available for that exact route.
The worst-value banks right now
These banks lose senders the most, measured as the average true cost (FX markup + fees) of sending $1,000across every corridor where we hold a live bank quote. Only banks covering 3+ corridors are ranked, for a fair average.
| # | Bank | Avg true cost | Corridors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OCBC | 6.12% | 3 |
| 2 | Santander | 4.97% | 8 |
| 3 | Deutsche Bank | 4.91% | 9 |
| 4 | Halifax | 4.48% | 5 |
| 5 | BMO | 4.37% | 5 |
| 6 | Lloyds | 4.32% | 8 |
| 7 | KiwiBank | 4.09% | 3 |
| 8 | Commonwealth Bank | 3.86% | 9 |
| 9 | Commerzbank | 3.61% | 6 |
| 10 | Chase (US) | 3.59% | 5 |
Download the data
The full per-corridor table behind these figures — 199 bank quotes vs the cheapest specialist on each route — as a CSV. Free to use with attribution to SendMoneyCompare.
Download CSV (2026-06-21)How we measured this
We collect live quotes for the same send amount on the same corridor from both traditional banks and specialist money-transfer apps, every 6 hours. For each quote we compute the true total cost as the gap between what the recipient would get at the mid-market exchange rate and what they actuallyget after the provider’s FX markup and fees:
true cost % = (mid-market receive − actual receive) ÷ mid-market receive × 100
The mid-market baseline is the latest daily rate in our 365-day rate history. This single figure captures both the hidden FX markup and the upfront fee, because the actual receive amount already reflects both. Figures on this page are computed from 199 bank quotes and 417 app quotes across 98 corridors and 42 providers, as of 21 June 2026. We exclude quotes that fall outside a sane −2% to 40% band to drop occasional scrape artifacts. The numbers refresh automatically as new quotes come in, so this page always reflects current pricing rather than a stale snapshot.
For context, the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide pegs the global average cost of sending money at around 6.4%, but it is published quarterly and never names individual banks. This index is high-frequency and names names.
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Press & citations: this dataset is free to cite with a link to SendMoneyCompare. For a specific corridor cut or comment, see our contact page.