Three kinds of account, in plain words
Before the app choice, understand what account your family in India actually holds. There are three main ones. The names look like jargon; the rules are not.
NRE (Non-Resident External). An Indian person living abroad, like a UK sender, opens this account in their own name. Money in it has to have arrived from outside India. It is held in rupees, but the story of it starts as foreign currency. The interest the bank pays on it is not taxed in India while the account holder is still classed as a Non-Resident Indian. The full amount, principal and interest, can be sent back out of India at any time with no cap. This is the account for the UK sender's own savings back home.
NRO (Non-Resident Ordinary). The same person living abroad holds this account too, but it holds money that started inside India. That means rent from a flat let out in Mumbai, a pension, a dividend, or a share of a family business. Foreign money can be paid into it as well, but that is not what it is designed for. Interest on the balance is taxed at source at 30 percent, plus surcharge and 4 percent cess.
Money can be moved out of India from an NRO account, but only up to the equivalent of one million US dollars a year, and only after paperwork (Form 15CA and Form 15CB) that a chartered accountant in India signs off. The UK-India tax treaty caps that rate at 15 percent for a UK-resident account holder. The sender has to file a Tax Residency Certificate (issued by HMRC) and Form 10F with the Indian bank before the interest is credited. No bank will do that automatically.
A resident savings account. This is the regular kind, held by someone who lives in India - a mother in Kolkata, a brother in Chennai. Foreign money can be sent into it from the UK without a problem. It is not designed for cross-border flows, but it is not blocked from receiving them either. The interest is taxed as ordinary Indian income, at the family member's own rate. This is what most UK senders are actually sending to.
There is a fourth type, FCNR(B), which is a foreign-currency fixed deposit for Non-Resident Indians. It is a savings product, not a receiving account for monthly sends, so it does not come up in this guide.
The one thing that trips up long-settled UK Indians
Read the NRO paragraph above once more, then this. Under India's foreign exchange rules, an Indian person who has moved abroad is no longer allowed to keep their old resident savings account open in its old form. The rule is that the account has to be re-designated as an NRO account once the person leaves. Plenty of people who moved to the UK five, ten, twenty years ago never did this. The old SBI or HDFC account is still open in Delhi, still receiving the monthly send, and the family thinks it is fine.
In most cases the account keeps working and nothing goes wrong. But strictly, the sender is out of step with the rules, and a stricter enforcement round can start a hold on the account that the family has to sort out in a branch in person. If the account is yours (the UK sender's), and you moved a while ago, it is worth converting it to NRO the next time you visit India. If the account is your parent's or your sibling's, and they live in India, the rule does not apply to them. Their resident savings account is fine.
Which account is your money actually going to
If you are sending from London to your mother's savings account in India, that is a resident account. Most sends look like this.
If you are sending to your own account back home, which account you need depends on where the money came from in the first place. If you funded it from your UK earnings, it should be NRE. If you funded it from Indian income before you left, it should be NRO.
If you are sending to your sibling and they also live abroad, in Dubai or the US, they will hold an NRE or NRO account too.
Once you know which of those it is, the app choice becomes clearer.
Which app to open, and for which job
There is no one right app on this route. There is a right app for each of a few common jobs.
Sending £100 to £500 to a family member with a resident savings account in India. Use Wise. The rate on the screen is close to the average market rate the whole world sees on a Google search, and the fee is small and visible. The money usually arrives in the recipient's bank account the same working day, and often faster. This is the workhorse for the send most people are actually making: parent to child, adult child to parent, sibling to sibling, into an SBI or HDFC or ICICI or Kotak or PNB account belonging to the person in India.
Sending to your own NRE account with ICICI Bank. This is where ICICI Money2India, ICICI's own service, is worth opening. To an ICICI NRE account it is same-day, has no fee on the headline number, and is built for exactly this flow. The rate is a small amount above the average market rate on recent snapshots (on 9 October 2026 it showed 127.15 rupees to the pound, when the average market rate was around 126.7), which makes the headline rupee count look generous. It is the fastest and simplest way to move it into that specific account. If you already hold an ICICI NRE account, this is the fit.
Sending to your own NRE account with a bank that is not ICICI. Money2India loses its edge. Use Wise. It reaches HDFC, Axis, SBI, Kotak and the rest at the same speed it reaches a resident account, on a better rate. Money2India can still send there, but it goes over the normal bank system and takes one to two working days, and the rate is not the reason to pick it.
A first-time send, want to see if the rate is real. Try Remitly on the first-transfer offer. The offer for a new UK-India customer this month is 128.57 rupees to the pound with no fee, capped at £1,000. That is a rate no regulated app can sustain day after day, so take it for the first send and check again for the second. After the promotion ends, Remitly's usual fee on GBP to INR is £1.99 on sends below £500 and nothing on £500 or more; the rate is close to Wise's.
Sending into a mobile wallet or straight to a UPI ID. Wise supports paying straight to a UPI ID, and the money arrives in the receiver's linked account in about a working day after conversion. This is useful when the family member does not want to give out an account number, or is on the move.
Sending from a UK bank counter. Do not. A UK bank charges £15 to £30 as a wire fee and takes another 2 to 4 percent quietly in the rate. On £300 that is between £15 and £20 gone. There is no reason to use it for a family send.
What £300 looks like this week
These are numbers from 12 October 2026. Rates move by the day, so check the calculator on the day you send.
The average market rate this morning is about 126.7 rupees to the pound. That is what a Google search would show. On £300, that rate would give you 38,010 rupees before any fee.
- Wise shows that rate on the screen and takes a small visible fee (a little under 1 percent on this send). The family gets a little under 37,700 rupees, and it usually arrives the same working day, often faster.
- ICICI Money2India to an ICICI NRE account shows no fee, and on 9 October was giving a rate of 127.15 rupees to the pound. On £300 that is 38,145 rupees, a few hundred rupees above Wise's arrival on the same send, with same-day delivery into the ICICI NRE account.
- Remitly Economy takes £1.99 on this size send and gives a rate close to Wise's. On £300 the family gets a little under 37,700 rupees. Economy delivery takes a few working days.
- Remitly, first transfer only, at the promotional rate of 128.57 rupees to the pound, with no fee, gives 38,571 rupees on £300. This is real and worth taking once. It is not a rate to plan monthly sends around.
- A UK bank counter or app takes £15 to £30 as a wire fee, plus 2 to 4 percent in the rate. The family gets around 35,500 rupees. There is no reason to send a family transfer this way.
When the app matters, and when the account matters more
The app matters most when the account is a plain resident savings account belonging to a family member in India. Then the whole game is the rate on the screen and the fee, and Wise is the right answer for most sends.
The account matters more than the app when the account is the sender's own NRE or NRO. Then how the money is taxed on receipt (or not, in NRE's case) and how it can be moved back out later matter more than a few hundred rupees of rate difference on a single send. Getting the account type wrong the first time (opening NRO when the sender's UK earnings really should have gone into NRE) costs the sender a percentage of the interest for years. That is not something an app choice can undo.
What the receive side looks like on other routes
On this route, the account type on the receiving side is what the sender has to think about. Other routes have their own version of the same check.
The Nigeria guide walks through the arrival check on a naira bank account and the 2026 rule linking a recipient's Bank Verification Number and National Identification Number, which can now hold a good transfer without notice. The Ghana guide walks through the shape of the problem on that route, where a mix of bank, cash pickup and mobile money on the receiving side does not always match what the sender picked.
A sender who understands the receiving side on their own route saves the family the trouble that starts when the money arrives.
What this guide does not answer
This is not tax advice. It says plainly what happens on receipt into each account type, so the reader can decide. It does not say how to file a return or how to claim the treaty rate on NRO interest. A large, unusual, business-shaped or year-crossing send needs a proper accountant in India, not a guide like this one.
It is also not a live rate widget. Boki publishes a verdict on a dated week's numbers, not a ticker. For a live comparison of every provider on the day, a comparison site will always be faster than a written piece.
In India, the choice most people are quietly making by accident is the account type on the receiving side. Once that is chosen on purpose, the app to open is usually obvious, and the family gets what the sender meant to send.
Corrections
None so far. If we get something wrong, the fix is dated here.