How we calculate these costs

What total cost means

We compare what the recipient actually gets in their bank or wallet against what they would receive at the mid-market exchange rate with zero fees. The difference, expressed in the send currency, is the total cost: visible fees plus hidden FX margin combined.

Concretely, for each provider we capture three numbers from the same quote screen: the explicit fee, the provider’s exchange rate, and the recipient amount. We compute the FX markup as 1 - (providerRate / midMarketRate) and the total cost as fixedFee + sendAmount × percentFee + sendAmount × fxMarkup. Rows are ranked by total cost, lowest first.

Why FX markup matters

Many providers advertise zero fees but build a 2 to 4 percent margin into their exchange rate. On a 1000 USD transfer, that is 20 to 40 USD the recipient never sees. We treat this as part of the cost, not as a fee.

What “mid-market rate” means

The mid-market rate is the rate banks use to settle with each other, with no margin on either side. It is the cleanest reference for what a currency is “actually worth” at a given moment. We source it daily from open.er-api.com (a free public exchange-rate feed). The corridor page shows the mid-market rate and the date it was last refreshed.

How prices are sourced

Prices are verified manually against each provider checkout page on the date shown next to each row. We re-verify weekly and flag the date prominently. The verification procedure is public in our operator runbook so you can audit how the numbers were captured.

Verification cadence

At MVP scale we re-verify each provider by hand once a week. The Verified YYYY-MM-DD stamp under each provider row is the actual date someone opened the provider’s site, captured a fresh quote, and committed it. A build-time check fails the deploy if any provider’s verification is older than 30 days, so stale data cannot reach this page.

At Phase 2 we plan to move continuously-priced providers (Wise, the stablecoin route) to scheduled refreshes via official APIs while keeping cash-pickup providers on a manual cadence. Either way, the date next to each row remains the truth -- it always reflects the last actual capture, not a marketing “real-time” claim.

Stablecoin routes

For crypto routes, we include the full round-trip cost: on-ramp fee, network fee, and off-ramp cost in the destination country. A USDC route is only listed if a practical off-ramp exists in that corridor.

For the USD to PHP corridor specifically, the three components are: the Coinbase USD-to-USDC purchase fee (typically 0 USD on the standard ACH tier), the Polygon network fee for sending USDC (around 0.10 USD), and the Coins.ph off-ramp spread when selling USDC for PHP (typically a fraction of a percent). All three are captured each week and combined into the row’s total cost.

What is not included

Several real-world costs deliberately sit outside the displayed total because they are user-specific, time-specific, or not measurable from a quote screen:

Recipient-side wallet KYC time. Coins.ph and similar wallets may hold funds during enhanced KYC review, especially for new accounts.
First-time-user friction: account creation, ID verification, ACH deposit hold periods, two-factor setup. A first transfer takes longer than the displayed delivery time.
Network slippage for the stablecoin route -- if the sender selects the wrong network (for example, Ethereum mainnet to a Polygon address), the funds may be lost or stuck. See the per-corridor guide for the network warning.
Sender-side bank fees on outgoing ACH or wire transfers. These vary by bank and are outside the remittance provider’s pricing.

Why these four providers

The MVP comparison covers Wise, Remitly, Western Union, and the USDC stablecoin route. The deliberate choice was to keep the table tight enough to verify by hand every week rather than ship a long list with stale numbers.

Xoom (PayPal), WorldRemit, MoneyGram, and US Bank Wire are queued for Phase 1.5 expansion. Cryptocurrency-only routes other than USDC, and P2P spreads on platforms like Binance P2P, are deferred until we can represent them with the same level of verifiable sourcing as the current rows. We would rather omit a provider than guess at its numbers.

Affiliate disclosure

Some providers compensate us when users sign up through our links. This never affects ranking. Rows are sorted by total cost only. Providers without affiliate programs are still included. Full details on the disclosure page.

Not financial advice

Stable Send publishes informational comparisons of remittance provider pricing. Nothing on this site is financial, tax, legal, or investment advice. Pricing changes; verify the current quote on the provider’s own site before sending. Money transmission is regulated; using cryptocurrency to move value across borders may have tax-reporting obligations in your country. Consult a qualified professional for advice specific to your situation.

Found an error?

Email hello@stable-send.com with the corridor, provider, and what you saw. We update within 24 hours.