Sending money homeshouldn’t cost this much
A student research lab measuring what cross-border transfers actually cost, and testing whether newer payment rails can do it cheaper.
Migrants send $905 billion home a year. The world takes a cut of every dollar.
$0B
Sent home each year
Money migrant workers send to family in other countries.
0.00%
Average cost to send
The global average on a $200 transfer.
0%
What it should be
The UN target the world agreed to hit by 2030.
$0B
The gap, every year
Our estimate of what closing it would return to families.
What a $200 transfer costs
as a share of the amount sent
the most expensive region in the world to receive money
more than double what was agreed
where the cost is supposed to be
Every point above that 3% line is money meant for rent, school fees or a doctor. Across $905 billion a year, the gap between what the world charges and what it agreed to charge comes to roughly $30 billion.
And then there is the waiting
Seconds
What the rails can already do
Off-chain payment channels settle in under a tenth of a second in our own testbed.
1 to 5 days
What a bank transfer takes
A rent deadline does not wait for a transfer to settle. Neither does a medical bill.
Figures from the World Bank and the UN. See exactly which, and where each one is used.
Start here
- TrueCostWork out what a transfer really costs once the exchange rate is counted.
- Coming soonWhat we are building next, including RemitBench, and how to suggest something.
- BlogThirty posts, from why people send money home to how the rails settle.
- Research papersLong-form work by lab members, with methods and references.