The number on your bank's transfer screen is never the number you actually get. A Singapore-based marketing manager sending £2,000 to a mortgage account in Manchester through her high-street bank's app will see "no transfer fee" in bold letters and an exchange rate quietly marked up 3-4% below the mid-market rate — the one you'd see on Google or XE.com. On £2,000, that's £60-80 gone before the money even leaves Singapore, and most people never notice because there's no separate line item to spot.
What each transfer method actually costs
DBS, OCBC and most Thai and Japanese retail banks price international transfers the same way: a flat fee of roughly $15-30 per transfer, plus a spread on the exchange rate that ranges from 2% to as much as 5% depending on the currency pair and how obscure the destination account is. Send money from Bangkok Bank to a Philippine peso account and the spread tends to sit at the wider end; send Singapore dollars to euros or pounds and it's usually closer to 2.5%. The fee is visible. The spread almost never is, which is exactly why banks lean on it.
Wise (formerly TransferWise) built its entire business on making that spread visible, and it remains the benchmark for a reason. On a $2,000 transfer from Singapore to a UK account, Wise typically charges around 0.4-0.7% total, landing the receiving amount within a few dollars of the real mid-market conversion. Revolut matches or beats Wise on weekday transfers within its free monthly allowance, but its rates widen sharply on weekends — a detail buried in the app's terms that catches people who transfer on a Saturday because that's when they finally have time to deal with it. Remitly and WorldRemit undercut both on cash-pickup routes to the Philippines, Indonesia and India, sometimes charging zero fee outright, because they make their margin on the exchange rate for first-time users and recover it through repeat volume.
Typical cost to move $2,000 (2026 rates)
- High-street bank wire (DBS, Bangkok Bank, MUFG): $25-40 flat fee + 2-4% rate spread — total cost roughly $65-120
- Wise: 0.4-0.7% total, no separate fee line — roughly $8-14 all-in
- Revolut (weekday, within free allowance): near mid-market, similar to Wise; weekend transfers add 0.5-1% extra
- Remitly/WorldRemit (bank deposit, not cash pickup): 0.5-1.5% depending on corridor, occasionally $0 fee for promotional first transfers
- Western Union cash pickup: highest of the group, often 3-6% combined, but the only option in places where the receiving family has no bank account
The corridor matters more than the provider
Where the money is going changes the maths more than which app you use. Transfers into major currencies — GBP, EUR, USD, AUD — are cheap almost everywhere because the liquidity is deep and providers compete hard on price. Transfers into the Philippine peso, Vietnamese dong or Indonesian rupiah carry wider spreads by default, even at Wise, because the currency pair is thinner and providers price in more risk. If you're a Filipino nurse in Tokyo sending part of your salary home every month, that difference compounds fast: a 1.5% spread instead of 0.6% on a $500 monthly remittance is roughly $54 a year lost to nothing.
Take the receiving side seriously too. A transfer that lands as a bank deposit is nearly always cheaper than one that lands as cash pickup, because cash-pickup networks (Western Union agents, 7-Eleven counters in Manila, convenience-store partners in Jakarta) charge the sending platform a cut for the physical handoff, and that cut gets passed straight to you. If the person receiving the money has any kind of bank account — even a basic one at a rural cooperative — ask them to use it. The saving is usually 2-3 percentage points, which on a $1,000 transfer is real money either of you would rather keep.
Regulatory paperwork nobody mentions until it's a problem
Singapore, Thailand and Japan all cap how much you can send without triggering extra documentation, and the threshold is lower than most new arrivals expect. In Singapore, transfers above SGD 20,000 in a single transaction (or cumulative patterns that look like structuring) can trigger a source-of-funds request from your bank under MAS anti-money-laundering rules — expect to produce payslips or a sale contract if you're moving proceeds from a property sale. Thailand requires a Foreign Exchange Transaction Form for any inbound or outbound transfer over USD 50,000, and outbound transfers tied to property purchases need a Tor Tor 3 form from the receiving bank to prove the money entered the country legitimately, which matters enormously if you ever want to repatriate profits from selling a Thai condo. Japan's threshold sits at JPY 30 million (roughly $200,000) before the Bank of Japan requires a formal declaration, but individual banks often ask questions well below that, particularly for first-time large transfers from a new resident.
None of this is exotic — it's routine compliance — but it does mean large transfers (buying property, closing out a foreign pension, inheritance proceeds) need two to three weeks of lead time, not two to three days. We'd tell anyone moving more than $30,000 to call their bank's relationship desk before initiating the transfer, not after it stalls in review.
Practical rules worth following
- Use Wise or Revolut for routine transfers under $5,000 — the savings over a bank wire are consistent and the app tells you the real rate upfront.
- For cash-pickup remittances to family without a bank account, compare Remitly and WorldRemit's live rate before Western Union; the difference on a $300 monthly send adds up over a year.
- Split large transfers only if your bank explicitly recommends it for compliance reasons — splitting to dodge a reporting threshold on your own initiative can look like structuring and freeze the account instead of helping.
- Keep payslips, sale contracts or gift letters ready for any transfer over $20,000 equivalent — the request for documentation is standard, but scrambling for it after the bank asks adds days to the delay.
Multi-currency accounts are worth setting up even if you only use them twice a year. Wise's borderless account and Revolut's multi-currency wallet let you hold GBP, USD, EUR and SGD simultaneously and convert only when the rate is in your favour, rather than being forced to convert the day rent or a mortgage payment is due. It's not going to make anyone rich, but it removes the worst version of the problem — converting at whatever rate happens to be live on the one day you're forced to move.
The gap between what a bank quotes and what a fintech app quotes on the exact same transfer, on the exact same day, still surprises people who've been expats for years. Check both before your next transfer, even if you've used the same bank since you arrived — rates and fee structures shift often enough that last year's comparison isn't reliable anymore.