International Money Transfer Services Comparison
Just trying to compare several of international money transfer options. Comparison is in no way a comprehensive analysis of those service it just focus on our main purpose: aspects of the service those can be expressed in numbers. To make it more level playing field we’d selected services So here we go, sending to the bank in Germany $100 and $1000 related fees and exchange rates as of 11/11/2020 11AM PST:
| Service | TransferWise | PayPal(Xoom) | WesternUnion | XE.COM |
| Receiving EUR for $100 | 82.84 | 81.46 | 84.35 | 83.21 |
| Fees for $100 | 2.47 | 4.99 | 0 | 0 |
| Total spend USD/EUR | 1.23 | 1.29 | 1.19 | 1.20 |
| Receiving EUR for $1000 | 842.35 | 829.7 | 843.50 | 832.10 |
| Fees for $1000 | 8.24 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total spend USD/EUR | 1.20 | 1.21 | 1.19 | 1.20 |
| Receiving EUR for $10000 | 8430.25 | 8297 | 8435.00 | 8406 |
| Fees for $10000 | 74.47 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total spend USD/EUR | 1.19 | 1.21 | 1.19 | 1.19 |
PayPal is clearly loosing this battle and is most expensive for all of those amounts. Interestingly enough that despite the flood of those new online platforms WesternUnion is still very competitive and give best price for transfers in all categories except for $10000 where TransferWise and WE.COM coming at the same price when rounded to the whole cent.
Next we look at cash pickup transfers. Unfortunately TransferWise and XE.COM do not offer such service and will be excluded from this comparison. Also cash pickup is limited to amounts lower than $10000. These are numbers as of 11/11/2020 1PM PST.
| Service | PayPal(Xoom) | WesternUnion |
| Receiving EUR for $100 | 81.64 | 76.54 |
| Fees for $100 | 4.99 | 4.00 |
| Total spend USD/EUR | 1.29 | 1.36 |
| Receiving EUR for $1000 | 829.7 | 765.40 |
| Fees for $1000 | 17.99 | 5.00 |
| Total spend USD/EUR | 1.23 | 1.31 |
Absence of bank account for recipient changes picture dramatically with WesternUnion showing how they are trying to benefit from manipulating exchange rate. In this case PayPal provides much cheaper option to send money to someone who doesn’t have bank account.
We’ll continue collecting data periodically and publish any updates here