How we compare remittance rates

Once a day at 03:00 UTC an automated job asks each provider's public price calculator for quotes on two typical amounts from each sending country we track, for example £500 and £1,000 from the UK or RM 1,000 and RM 2,000 from Malaysia. Rates and fees are taken exactly as each provider quotes them; we never type in or estimate a rate. The amount received is then normalised to the same total payment, as explained below.

If a provider does not offer a route at all, for example a provider that does not serve senders in the UAE, it is listed as not offered rather than left out silently.

The mid-market rate is the wholesale midpoint between buying and selling a currency, with no margin. For Bangladesh we start from Bangladesh Bank's published USD/BDT weighted average rate (WAR) and convert it to pounds or dirhams with a free daily USD cross-rate feed (fawazahmed0/currency-api).

Bangladesh Bank's figure reflects interbank trading on the previous business day, and the cross rate is a daily reference, so the benchmark can lag the live market a little. Occasionally a provider's rate is slightly above it; the table then says how far above rather than showing a negative margin.

Providers charge in different ways: some take the fee out of the amount you send, others add it on top. To compare like with like, we treat the amount as the total you pay, fee included. For providers that add the fee on top, we work out what would arrive if the fee came out of that total: received = (amount − fee) × rate.

Where a provider offers several ways to pay or receive, we use one consistent option: Wise paid by bank transfer, Remitly's standard price rather than its first-transfer discount, the WorldRemit payout method that delivers most, and Xe's default option. Taptap Send publishes one rate per route with no fee for Bangladesh.

The margin column combines the fee and the exchange-rate markup into one number: margin = (mid-market rate − received ÷ amount sent) ÷ mid-market rate. A lower margin means more of your money reaches your family.

Providers sometimes block automated requests or have outages. When that happens we keep showing that provider's last good quote, marked Stale with the time it was collected, instead of hiding it. The benchmark works the same way.

The Bangladesh government's cash incentive on formal remittances, any charges by the recipient's bank or wallet, and one-off promotional offers are not part of the amounts shown.