You send £300 to your mother in Nairobi. A minute later her phone buzzes. M-PESA. Confirmed. You have received KES 51,813. She sends you a thumbs-up. The money has arrived.
Not quite. What has arrived is the wallet balance. The money, the notes she can hand to the landlord or the schoolteacher, is what she walks out of the agent booth with. Between the two sits a fee she pays and you have never seen.
This piece is a plain map of that fee, across the six mobile-money regimes the diaspora sends into. It is the receive-side arithmetic that no send-side app quotes you, because the send-side app is finished the moment the SMS lands.
The two steps
Mobile money is a two-step system, and only one step is visible from the app.
Step one is the SMS. The transfer app talks to the wallet, the balance updates, and the family sees the money. This is the step the send-side product owns, and this is the step it markets. In every regime, this step is fast and mostly cheap.
Step two is the agent. The small kiosk with the green sign at the end of the market street, the shop counter, the woman at a plastic table with a phone. The family walks in, presents the phone, gets cash. This is the step the send-side product does not touch and does not price. The mobile network sets the fee ladder for this step, the agent takes their cut of it, and the family pays it. In some regimes there is also a small government tax loaded on top.
The gap between the wallet balance and the note in the hand is where the fee sits. It is small in some countries, meaningful in others, and in two places on this map it has been priced to zero. The point of the map is that you can see, before you send, what your family will lose to it.
The map
Kenya – M-PESA
M-PESA is the template, and on a UK send the arithmetic is gentle. The withdrawal fee at the agent runs on a ladder from KES 11 (about 6p) at the smallest bands up to a hard cap of KES 309 (about £1.80) on anything from KES 50,001 to the KES 250,000 per-transaction ceiling.
On your £300 send, which lands as roughly KES 51,813 (about £300) in the wallet, the family pays the top-band fee: KES 309. They walk out with the equivalent of about £298.20. The loss to cash-out is small, about 0.6% of the amount.
Airtel Money raised its withdrawal fees in July 2026 and now matches M-PESA on the smaller bands. The pattern is the same, the numbers close.
There is a way to skip the withdrawal fee entirely, and most Kenyan families already use it: pay the merchant directly from the wallet, using PayBill for utilities and schools, or Buy Goods for shops. The customer pays nothing; the merchant absorbs the fee. If the money is going to be spent on bills or in a shop, this route is free. The sibling piece Kenya mobile money fees walks the levers in depth.
Uganda – MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money
Uganda has two networks, similar ladders, and one thing on top that Kenya does not.
The MTN Mobile Money ladder runs from UGX 330 at the small bands up to UGX 20,000 (about £4) at the ceiling. Airtel Money’s ladder is close. Then, separate from the operator fee, the government adds a 0.5% withdrawal excise duty on the amount, deducted automatically at the same moment. It is not a mobile-money company charge. It is a tax the wallet sits inside.
On a £200 send to Kampala, which lands as roughly UGX 1,001,352 (about £200), the family pays the MTN fee for that band (UGX 15,000) and the 0.5% tax on the amount (about UGX 5,000). The total is around UGX 20,000, roughly £4, or about 2% of what you sent. That is the largest cash-out shrinkage on this map for a routine family send.
The lever exists here too. The MTN MoMo Pay and Airtel Money Pay codes let the family pay a merchant straight from the wallet: no operator fee, no agent commission, and the 0.5% tax does not apply because it is scoped to withdrawals. If the money is going to buy something the family was going to buy anyway, the whole shrinkage disappears.
Ghana – MTN MoMo
MTN Mobile Money is the dominant wallet, and the cash-out ladder is unusually simple. Below GHS 50 (about £3.20), the withdrawal is free. From GHS 50 up to GHS 2,000, the fee is 1% of the amount. Above GHS 2,000, it is flat: GHS 20 (about £1.30), whatever the size.
A word about the e-levy, because the internet is still full of the old story. The Electronic Transfer Levy was repealed in April 2025. Since then, the family sees no e-levy line on the receipt. Inward international remittances were exempt when the levy was live anyway. If you have been reading old guides and worrying about a 1% deduction on the wallet on top of the withdrawal fee, that worry is out of date.
MTN briefly announced a 0.75% charge on MoMo-to-bank transfers in May 2026, dubbed the “backdoor e-levy” by the parliamentary Minority. The Bank of Ghana suspended it inside 24 hours, before it took effect. It has not been reintroduced. The ordinary cash-out an ordinary family does is untouched by any of this.
On a £200 send to Accra, which lands as roughly GHS 3,090 (about £200), a full withdrawal sits above the GHS 2,000 threshold, so the fee is the flat cap: GHS 20. The family walks out with roughly GHS 3,070, about £198.70. The loss is around 0.65%.
Ghana’s MoMoPay lever works like Kenya’s Buy Goods. Pay a merchant with the MoMo merchant code, and no cash-out fee applies to anyone.
Tanzania – M-Pesa Tanzania and Mixx by Yas
Two networks again. Vodacom runs M-Pesa here (a separate operation from Kenya, with its own numbers). Yas, the group formerly known as Tigo, runs Mixx (formerly Tigo Pesa).
The operator ladders are broadly similar to Kenya’s shape. On top, the government adds its own withdrawal levy on a small ladder of its own; the two land on the family as a single deduction. On a £300 send that lands as roughly TZS 1,056,300 (about £300), the operator fee is TZS 8,000 and the levy is around TZS 1,875. The total is around TZS 9,875, close to £2.80, or about 0.9% of the amount. Mixx by Yas is close on the same amount.
Tanzania has the same merchant-pay lever the other East African markets have. Whether the family uses it depends on whether the money is going to a place that accepts wallet payment; where it does, the cash-out step is skipped.
Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire – Orange Money and Wave
West Africa is where the map does its most interesting thing. Wave, the challenger, priced the traditional cash-out fee to zero and moved the agent’s earnings onto a different part of the business. In Senegal, Orange Money matched Wave and cut the operator’s own cash-out fee to zero: the operator’s own line reads “Les retraits deviennent 100% gratuits.”
Then in December 2025 the state layered a 0.5% money-transfer tax (TTA) on withdrawals above XOF 20,000 a day, capped at XOF 2,000 per transaction. On Orange Money, the operator confirms it collects the tax at the counter. On Wave, cash-out remains free at Wave’s own fee; the TTA is a state tax that applies to withdrawals over XOF 20,000/day and applies at Wave to the extent the operator collects it – check the receipt.
On a £250 send to Dakar, which lands as roughly XOF 191,250 (about £250), the family walks out with roughly XOF 190,300 on Orange Money after the 0.5% TTA on the withdrawal. Wave charges nothing itself; the TTA still applies to withdrawals over XOF 20,000/day, so the amount reaching the counter is XOF 190,300 to XOF 191,250 depending on how the operator collects it. Either way, Senegal is no longer a zero-fee cash-out step: the state took a small slice back in December 2025.
Côte d’Ivoire is the other half of the story, and it has not converged. Wave in CI is still free to cash out. Orange Money in CI still runs the classic ladder: on that same £250 send, the withdrawal fee is around XOF 2,000, about £2.60, roughly 1%.
The plain reading: if the family in Abidjan uses Wave, cash-out is free. If they use Orange Money, it is not. Same UK send, different arithmetic depending on which app is on the family’s phone.
Note: Senegal’s TTA (Law 2025-17, effective 17 December 2025) is a 0.5% state tax capped at XOF 2,000 that applies to transfers, withdrawals, bill payments, merchant payments and international transfers. On withdrawals it kicks in above XOF 20,000 cumulated per day. It is a state tax, not an operator fee, and Orange Money confirms it collects it at the counter.
Nigeria – a different mechanic
Nigeria breaks the pattern of this map, and it is important that you know it does. There is no OPay withdrawal ladder, no Palmpay tariff, no Moniepoint schedule of cash-out fees, because the withdrawal is not what those companies charge for. Wallet-to-wallet transfers are largely free (with a NGN 50 stamp duty from the government on transfers of NGN 10,000 and above). The cash comes out of an agent’s POS machine at a kiosk on the corner, and the agent, not the wallet company, sets the price at the point of transaction.
The Central Bank tightened the agent-banking framework in October 2025, and from April 2026 a customer is capped at withdrawing NGN 100,000 per day and NGN 500,000 per week through an agent. There is no published customer fee cap. The agent charges what they charge.
The trade association’s standard list is a moving target across sources: NGN 100 to NGN 200 on the smallest bands (2 to 4%), NGN 300 to NGN 500 on a NGN 5,000 withdrawal (6 to 10%), flattening to NGN 600 to NGN 800 on a NGN 50,000 withdrawal (about 1 to 1.6%). Actual practice varies. In cash-tight areas of Lagos, agents have been reported charging 10% on small withdrawals. In quieter times the standard list holds.
On a £250 send that lands as roughly NGN 455,000 (about £250) in the wallet, the family cannot cash the whole thing out in one visit. They visit a POS agent several times across several days, or split across agents, and pay roughly 1% to 3% of the amount in agent fees along the way, depending on the mix of bands and where they are. Realistically, the family walks away with somewhere between NGN 442,000 and NGN 450,000, about £243 to £247.
The wallet leg is essentially free. The cash-out is where the shrinkage happens, and it is a conversation with a human at a kiosk, not a line on a receipt.
The lever, plainly
In every regime on this map except Nigeria, there is a way to spend the wallet balance without ever cashing it out. Pay the school directly from the wallet. Pay the electricity bill. Pay the shop with the merchant code, the till number, the PayBill, the MoMoPay. The customer pays nothing. The merchant, quietly, pays a small fee to the network.
If the money you sent was going to be spent on bills or in a shop anyway, this route is free of the cash-out fee. It is also the reason mobile-money receipts do not always translate to trips to the agent. Ask the family what they were going to spend it on; if a merchant on the other end takes wallet payment, the cash-out fee never lands.
Nigeria is the exception. The wallet-to-wallet pay works and is nearly free, but the everyday economy off the wallet still runs on cash for most things a family buys, and that means a trip to the POS agent, and that means paying the agent’s rate.
When your family wants dollars, not the local currency
Some families in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria would rather hold dollars than the local currency, because the local currency is losing value while they wait. In those countries, sending in local currency and letting the family cash it out means paying to swap into dollars twice: once at the send, once at the counter. The piece on dollars, euros or local currency walks that decision in more detail. For the purpose of this map: if the family is planning to hold, not spend, the local currency is not always the right thing to send in the first place, and the cash-out fee is only one line in a larger arithmetic.
The bank-account alternative
In Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania, most families now hold a bank account alongside the mobile wallet, and some transfer apps let you send straight to the account. This is different arithmetic. There is usually an ATM withdrawal fee to get the money into notes, a monthly maintenance fee on the account, and sometimes a small fee on the incoming transfer itself. On small, frequent sends, the wallet is almost always cheaper. On larger, one-off sends where the family will hold rather than spend, the bank route sometimes wins on the total.
The trade-off is worth knowing about, not worth an essay. The habit of a family is the habit of a family; ask what they already do.
The one-line recap
- Kenya, M-PESA: cash-out costs the family about KES 309 at the top, roughly £1.80 on a £300 send. Merchant-pay skips it.
- Uganda, MTN or Airtel: operator fee plus a 0.5% government tax, together roughly 2% on a £200 send. Merchant-pay skips both.
- Ghana, MTN MoMo: flat GHS 20 on anything above GHS 2,000, about £1.30. The e-levy is gone.
- Tanzania, M-Pesa or Mixx: operator fee plus a small levy, together about 0.9% on a £300 send.
- Senegal, Orange Money: operator fee is zero; the 0.5% state TTA on withdrawals over XOF 20,000/day applies, capped at XOF 2,000. About XOF 956 on a £250 send. Wave: operator fee zero; TTA applies to the extent Wave collects it at the counter.
- Côte d’Ivoire: Wave is free; Orange Money still runs the ladder, about 1% on a £250 send.
- Nigeria, any wallet: the wallet leg is free; the POS agent takes 1% to 3% at the counter, and the family is capped at NGN 100,000 per day.
The SMS is the receipt. What the family walks away with is the receipt minus the cash-out. In most of this map the loss is small enough that you would not have thought to ask about it; in Uganda and Nigeria it is worth knowing about; in Senegal, the operator has stopped charging for cash-out on either wallet, and the state has replaced part of it with a 0.5% withdrawal tax capped at XOF 2,000. Ask the family what they are going to do with the money before it lands, and half the time the cash-out step, and the fee that comes with it, does not need to happen at all.
This map is one part of Boki’s arrival coverage, which follows the money once it has landed on the other side of the wire.
Corrections
- 2026-07-31: An earlier version of the Ghana section said a “backdoor e-levy” charge on MTN MoMo-to-bank transfers “was introduced in June 2026”. MTN announced the 0.75% charge on 25 May 2026 to take effect 1 June 2026, but the Bank of Ghana suspended it on 26 May 2026 – inside 24 hours, before it took effect – and it has not been reintroduced. The paragraph has been rewritten to reflect that timeline.
- 2026-07-31: An earlier version of the Senegal section said cash-out was free on both Orange Money and Wave, with a note that Senegal’s December 2025 transfer tax “does not sit on the cash-out”. Senegal’s TTA (Law 2025-17, effective 17 December 2025) is a 0.5% state tax capped at XOF 2,000 that applies to withdrawals over XOF 20,000/day. Orange Money confirms it collects it at the counter; Wave’s operator fee is zero but the state tax still applies. The main-body paragraph, the worked example, the recap line and the ending line have all been rewritten so the tax is stated where it lands.
- 2026-07-31: An earlier version of the Nigeria section quoted specific AMMBAN trade-association figures (“NGN 200 on NGN 5,000”, “about 1.6% at NGN 50,000”) that could not be substantiated against a primary AMMBAN release. The paragraph has been softened to a range across the sources actually in circulation, keeping the directionally correct 1-3% overall family loss.