If you bank with Starling in the UK, you have probably seen the “Send money abroad” button inside the app. Tapping it opens Starling’s own international transfer flow. A lot of people assume the button is Wise wearing Starling’s colours, because Starling and Wise announced that plan back in 2017. It never launched. Starling dropped it in 2018 and built its own thing.
So what you are looking at is Starling moving your money, at Starling’s fees, on Starling’s schedule. The rate is fair. The fees are visible. On some sends it is genuinely the right button to press. On most it is not, and the reason is a delivery charge Wise does not have.
Here is when to press send in Starling, and when to close the app and open Wise instead.
What Starling actually charges
Two things stack on every international send.
The conversion fee is 0.4 percent of the amount you are sending. On 200 pounds that is 80p. On 1,000 pounds it is 4 pounds.
The delivery fee depends on how the money is being sent. For most countries in the world, Starling has to hand your money to the same slow, expensive banking network your high-street bank uses. On those sends it charges 5.50 pounds, no matter how much you are sending. For a small number of countries Starling has a faster, cheaper connection into local banks; on those sends the delivery fee drops to as little as 30p. Starling picks the cheaper route automatically. The countries with the cheap connection are the ones you would expect: the euro area, the US, Poland, South Africa, and a handful more.
The exchange rate is close to the real rate, the one you get if you search “1 pound in euros” on Google. Starling does not layer a hidden margin on top the way most banks do. What the fee page shows you is what you pay.
The 200 pounds test
Take a small send, 200 pounds to a bank account in the euro area, on a Tuesday.
On a country Starling has the cheap connection into: 80p conversion fee, plus 30p delivery, and the rate is basically the real one. Your family sees around 234 euros land.
On Wise, the same send: about 80p in fees, rate very close to the same. Your family sees around 235 euros.
The difference is a euro. If you are already logged into Starling and you send one or two of these a year, it is not worth opening a second app for a euro. Press send in Starling.
Now try the same 200 pounds to a country Starling can only reach on the slow, expensive network: Nigeria, India, the Philippines, most of Africa outside the four or five countries on the cheap connection. The 5.50 pound delivery fee lands. Your family sees around 6 pounds less than they would if you had opened Wise. On a small send, 5.50 pounds off the top is nearly 3 percent before the rate is even in the picture.
So the rule is simple. If the country is on Starling’s cheap connection, and you are already in the app, Starling is fine. If it is not, open Wise.
The weekend catch
Starling does not process international payments at weekends or on UK bank holidays. The cut-off is Friday evening UK time. The next send window opens at 2am on Monday.
This matters more than it sounds. A lot of the reason a person is tapping “Send money abroad” at 8pm on a Sunday is that something at home cannot wait until Monday morning. Starling will not help you. Wise runs every day of the week and the money can move in minutes on the routes it settles fastest on. If you use Revolut as well, Revolut Standard adds a 1 percent weekend charge on the exchange rate on the free plan, which is often still less painful than waiting until Monday.
For a Sunday-night send, Starling is not in the running. Do not sit on the app waiting for it to work.
The one narrow reason to keep the money in Starling
Starling is a fully licensed UK bank. Money in your Starling current account is protected by the 
Financial Services Compensation Scheme, up to 120,000 pounds per person. If the bank fails, that money is safe.
Wise is not a bank. It is a payment firm. The money you hold in Wise sits in ring-fenced accounts at partner banks. It is not covered by the same scheme.
For a person who moves money in and straight out again, this does not matter. For a person who sits on the transfer money in Starling for a week while they wait for the rest of the amount to come in from work, it is a real reason not to move it into Wise ahead of time. Send from Starling, or move it just before you send. Do not park it in Wise for the sake of a slightly better rate on a send you are not going to make for another five days.
That is the only case where Starling wins on more than a euro.
The verdict
Starling’s “Send money abroad” button is not a bad deal. It is a fair one, on a small send to a country on Starling’s cheap connection, on a weekday, in an app you already have open. For that reader it is worth the pound.
For everyone else, and for every country Starling has to reach on the slow network, and for every send that needs to move on a Sunday, close the app. Open Wise. The money that lands in the family’s account is the number that matters, and Wise usually lands more.
Corrections
- 2026-07-13: An earlier version of this page said money in a Starling current account was protected by the FSCS up to 85,000 pounds per person. The FSCS deposit protection limit has been 120,000 pounds per eligible person, per bank, since 1 December 2025. The figure on this page has been updated. An earlier version also said Starling’s delivery fee on its cheap connection was “somewhere between 30p and 90p”; Starling’s published price list is “from 30p” and the 90p ceiling was not sourced. The line has been changed to “as little as 30p”.