Money on the wrong side of a border

The transfer industry acts as if money only moves one way - from a working-age person in the UK to family in a home country. Real diaspora life is not like that. Savings sit on the wrong side of a border. A parent in Lagos gets old and needs money moved back. A child needs school fees paid in a currency that is neither yours nor hers. These pages are for the questions the transfer apps do not think to ask.

Start here

Should your family receive dollars, euros or the local currency? is the question that shapes every other choice on this hub. What currency the money arrives in changes which fee she pays to touch it, whether it holds value between transfers, and whether a dollar account in Lagos or Nairobi is worth the paperwork. Read this first.

How to send money from India (or Kenya, or Nigeria) to the UK covers sending money the other way, which most senders do not know is possible. Most remittance apps only run one way; the ones that go both ways are the useful ones when you need to move money back.

When the amount is large

A few hundred pounds a month is one job. A house, an inheritance or your savings is another. The bank asks where the money came from, and the app you use every month is often not the right tool. Pick the page that matches what you are doing.

Moving your savings to the UK when you already hold them abroad is what to do with an account that was fine when you lived there and is now stuck. This is where the emigration case parts company with routine remittance - the amount is larger, the receiving-side questions are different, and the paperwork matters.

Bringing an inheritance from abroad into the UK covers the papers the UK bank wants when a five- or six-figure inheritance arrives, the plain tax answer, and how to move the money.

Proving where a family gift came from so it clears the checks is for a large gift from home that the bank has paused. It lists the four documents the bank wants and what the gift letter must say.

Sending money from the UK to buy a home abroad is the other direction: money going out to pay for a house. For that size, your bank's international transfer button is the most expensive tool on the screen.

Timing a large one-off currency transfer is for one lump of money and one date. It explains the three tools a currency broker offers, and when each one is right.

Where to look next

Sending money both ways still depends on the country. The Nigeria page includes what a UK-bound send from Lagos looks like in practice. The Kenya, Philippines and India pages carry the same for their sides. If you already have a Nigerian bank account and want to know what a UK-bound send from that account actually costs, send money from Nigeria is the closer read.

The Friday number runs weekly on one country at a time - always money going out from the UK. When a number for money coming the other way is worth publishing, we will run it here.