Amount
Everything charged on the sending side: KYC, authentication, compliance, processing, revenue share.
Intermediary bank fees on the way across. Off by default.
What the partner paying out on the receive side charges. Off by default.
Exchange rate
Result
Cost to send 250.00 USD
Total charges 0.00 USD
No charges switched on yet. Add values above to see the cost.
How to read the remittance cost calculator
The headline number is the total cost as a percentage of the amount sent. It is the only figure that compares honestly across corridors and across send sizes — a flat 5 is cheap on 1,000 and ruinous on 50. Underneath it, the bar splits that cost by who takes it, which is usually more useful than the total: a corridor where most of the cost sits with a payout partner is a commercial problem, and one where most of it sits in your own processing is an engineering problem.
The three sections separate charges by where they arise, not by who pays them. Sending side covers everything you levy or absorb before the money leaves: onboarding checks, authentication, compliance screening, card or ACH processing, fraud tooling, and anything shared with a referral partner. Correspondent banking is what an intermediary deducts in transit — real on SWIFT routes, absent on local rails. Payout partner is what the receiving end charges to put the money in a hand, an account or a wallet.
Switch the remittance cost calculator to its table view once the charges are set. Nine send amounts, the same charges, and a cost column that shows you exactly where fixed fees stop dominating. That crossover point is the single most useful number in remittance pricing, and it is the reason minimum send amounts exist.
The exchange rate is usually the largest fee
A transfer advertised at zero fees is not free. The margin has simply moved into the rate, where the customer cannot see it without looking up the mid-market rate and doing the arithmetic themselves. On many consumer corridors the FX spread is several times the visible fee, and on some it is the entire revenue model.
This remittance cost calculator does not assume a spread, because it cannot know yours. Enter your customer-facing rate and the margin is already inside the receiver figure, invisible in the cost breakdown. Enter the mid-market rate instead, add a percentage charge for the spread, and you will see the cost the way a regulator, a price-comparison site, or a well-informed customer would see it — which is the view worth designing against.
The optional rate fetch exists for convenience and nothing more. It calls a public endpoint from your browser, it is not a price feed, and it is not a source to quote from. If it fails, enter the rate by hand; nothing else on the page depends on it.
What the remittance cost calculator does not model
The remittance cost calculator is a per-transaction model, so it says nothing about the costs that do not scale with a transfer: licensing and bonding, the compliance function, banking relationships, pre-funding and the working capital trapped in it, treasury losses, chargebacks and fraud write-offs, or the platform itself. A corridor can look healthy here and lose money in every other respect.
It also assumes charges are deducted before conversion and that percentages apply to the original send amount. Where your arrangement deducts sequentially, or takes a fee in the receiving currency after conversion, treat the output as close rather than exact — and when the difference matters enough to argue about, it is worth modelling the real waterfall rather than adjusting this one.
Questions we are asked most
Regulatory notice and limitations
The transmission and movement of money are regulated activities and may require licences, registrations, approvals or other regulatory permissions in each jurisdiction in which you operate. This page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or regulatory advice; you should independently verify all applicable requirements and obtain appropriate professional and regulatory guidance before commencing any activity.
Faisal Khan LLC is an internet marketing and business development company. It is not a bank, money transmitter, broker-dealer, investment adviser or other regulated financial entity, and offers no financial services. Figures produced by this tool are illustrative and depend entirely on the values entered. Nothing here creates any advisory, fiduciary, agency or contractual relationship.
For what transfers cost in the market rather than in your own model, the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide publishes the average cost of sending money between specific country pairs each quarter, on a comparable basis. The reduction of those costs is also a formal policy target — UN Sustainable Development Goal 10.c commits to bringing remittance transaction costs to less than 3 per cent. Both are useful benchmarks for whatever percentage this calculator returns for your own route.