If you send money from the UK to Nepal, the app you open depends on one thing: where your family collects it. A rupee bank account. A phone wallet like eSewa or Khalti. Or cash at a counter. Get that right and the rest of the choice is small. Get it wrong and the money either sits in an account she does not check, or arrives in a shape she cannot spend.
Ask her which one before you send. Then use the guide below.
The three places the money lands
A rupee bank account at NIC Asia Bank, Global IME Bank, Nabil Bank or Nepal Investment Mega Bank is the everyday landing spot for a household running month to month. Almost every UK-side app supports at least these four banks. The money arrives in Nepali rupees, credited to her account, same day or next working day through the phone apps. This is the right place if she has a card, uses ATMs, and pays her bills from the account.
A mobile wallet ID at 
eSewa, 
Khalti or IME Pay is the second answer, and the one you may not have thought of. Younger relatives in Kathmandu and Pokhara are wallet-first for daily spending, top-ups and small purchases. The money lands as a wallet balance, usually in minutes, and she spends it inside the wallet before it ever touches a bank card. If your daughter is a student and she asks you to send to her eSewa number rather than her account, this is why. The wallet is her account, in practice.
A cash pickup at an IME counter, a Prabhu Money Transfer counter, a City Express agent or a Western Union or MoneyGram window is the third place. It is the right answer for a grandmother in a hill district who does not have a bank card and does not use a phone wallet, and for anyone who wants the money as physical notes in her hand. It is the most expensive of the three per pound sent, and it needs the receiver to show up with an ID.
If you are not sure which one she uses, do not guess. A misrouted send to a bank account she does not check is money you paid to move without her being able to spend it.
The real rate to compare against
The real exchange rate for the pound against the Nepali rupee on 28 August 2026 was £1 = 207.80 NPR, per 
Wise’s own rate history page. That is the number Google shows, and the one to compare every app against. Over the last thirty days the pound moved between 204.84 and 209.08 rupees, averaging 206.69.
Every app you look at will quote a rate. The gap between its rate and the Google rate is a small slice the app keeps quietly in the exchange rate, on top of the visible fee. At the real rate, £200 is Rs 41,560 and £500 is Rs 103,900. Nothing you send will arrive at those exact numbers, because both the fee and that small slice take a share. What you want to know is how small.
Which app opens which one
Wise is the plain answer if your family collects into a rupee bank account. It quotes the Google rate on the screen and takes a fee on top. On the £4,000 test send the comparison sites sampled on 28 August 2026, Wise used a rate of 207.59 (a fraction below Google’s) and a fee of about £45. On a £500 send the fee scales down but stays visible on the screen, typically about £5 to £6 on this send. Wise does not deliver to eSewa, Khalti or IME Pay wallets for Nepal, and it does not do cash pickup. If your family is on a wallet or waiting at a counter, Wise is not the app for that send.
Remitly is the widest app on the Nepal side: bank deposit to NIC Asia and Global IME and a long list of others, wallet delivery straight into eSewa, and cash pickup across the standard network. The posted fees are £0.99 for bank deposit, £0.99 for wallet, and £3.99 for cash pickup. There is a new-customer promotion that gives no fee and a promotional rate of 208.23 NPR to the pound on the first £500 sent. That promotional rate sits above the Google rate, which is Remitly paying you to try the app once. On £500 it works out to Rs 104,115 arriving. The rate on your second transfer will be the standard one, a little below Google’s, and the fee will apply. Take the promo once, and after that judge Remitly on its everyday number.
Taptap Send is the fee-free option here. It charges nothing on the send and prices its work into the rate. It lands into Global IME, NIMB and Nabil for bank deposit, and into City Express counters for cash pickup, in most cases within three minutes. On the £4,000 comparison sample on 28 August 2026 its rate was 208.05, close to the Google rate of 207.80 that morning. On the bank and cash-pickup side, Taptap Send is worth a look next to Remitly at the moment of the send. It does not deliver into eSewa or Khalti wallets.
WorldRemit covers all three: bank transfer, cash pickup and mobile wallet. WorldRemit says 90 per cent of transfers to Nepal are delivered to its local partner within minutes. Its posted fee is small, typically £0.99 to £1.99 depending on the amount you send and how you pay for it, with the rate a small percentage below Google’s.
Western Union and MoneyGram both cover bank deposit, cash pickup and mobile wallet. Their published fees are low (Western Union has often run a zero-fee send with the price folded into the rate; MoneyGram was £5 on the £4,000 sample), but at the small end, £200 in particular, the total cost tends to sit above the newer apps because the small slice they keep on the rate does not shrink when you send less. On cash pickup specifically, though, they are the answer if the receiver is somewhere the phone-first apps do not have a partner window.
You may see IME Remit named on Nepali-side pages and think it is the app to download. It is not a UK-side sending app in the way Wise and Remitly are. IME is the Nepali receive-side operator: several UK-side services (RIA, ACE Money Transfer, MoneyGram, Remitly, Panda Remit) hand off to IME on landing so the money reaches an IME counter or a Khalti wallet. Pick the UK-side app on its price and where it lands, not on which Nepali counter its money ends up at.
What actually arrives, on 200 and 500 pounds
The exact fee and rate on the day you send will move a little, but the picture below is close enough to plan against. On a £500 send to a rupee bank account, at rates the comparison sites had sampled on the morning of 28 August 2026:
- Wise: rate 207.59, fee about £5 to £6, roughly Rs 102,700 arrives.
- Taptap Send: rate around 208, no fee, roughly Rs 104,000 arrives.
- Remitly (standard): rate a little below Google’s, £0.99 fee, roughly Rs 102,500 arrives on bank deposit.
- Remitly (first-transfer promo): rate 208.23, no fee, Rs 104,115 arrives.
- WorldRemit: rate a small percentage below Google’s, £0.99 fee, roughly Rs 102,600 arrives.
- Western Union / MoneyGram: rate below Google’s with a small or zero posted fee; roughly Rs 100,000 to Rs 102,000 arrives on £500, and a little less on £200 because the small slice they keep on the rate does not shrink with the amount.
On a £200 send the picture tightens because the fixed part of the fee is a bigger share of the total. Wise’s fee stays visible on the screen and the rate stays close to Google’s, so the arrival is close to the plain maths (Rs 41,560, minus the fee-in-pounds converted at the rate). Remitly’s £0.99 posted fee on bank deposit or wallet, and Taptap Send’s zero fee, both leave more of your £200 on the recipient’s side. This end of the send-to-Nepal market has enough apps in it that £200 gets a fair deal. Take the first-transfer promo once, then judge the app on its everyday rate.
The one rule to know on the Nepali side
Every UK-side app that lands money into Nepal has to hand it off to a Nepali remittance company licensed by Nepal Rastra Bank. That is the 
Remittance Bylaws 2023 framework, and it is why Wise cannot simply wire straight from its London bank into your mother’s Global IME account: there is always a Nepali-side remittance company doing the local delivery.
This is not a wall your money has to climb. It is why the money arrives when it does, and why the counter or the wallet knows what to release. It is also why the same app can look a little different on different days: a change on the Nepali-side partner’s end is a change you see, and the sending app does not always explain it.
Where this sits in Nepal’s economy
Remittance inflows into Nepal came to Rs 2.36 trillion in the year to July 2026, per 
Nepal Rastra Bank’s own count reported on 27 August 2026. That is 33 per cent of the whole country’s income, up from 27.80 per cent the year before, and the highest share ever recorded. In June 2026 alone Nepal took in Rs 242.33 billion, against Rs 189 billion in the same month the year before.
For a UK-side sender the practical read on that is short: there is enough money moving from the UK to Nepal that the newer apps are competing hard on the fee side. That is why £200 and £500 sends see £0.99 posted fees and rates within half a percent of Google’s, on the bank-deposit and wallet sides. The counter side is slower to move because the physical network costs more per send to run.
One line for the Gurkha families
Aldershot is called Little Kathmandu for a reason. Gurkha soldiers and their families have been sending from the UK to Nepal since long before there were apps: military postal orders in the 1960s, bank drafts in the 1980s, cash carried home in the 1990s. The Global IME account, the eSewa balance and the IME counter your relative uses today is the modern shape of that same habit. What has changed is that more of your pound now reaches her.
The verdict, plain
If she has a bank account and you send month to month, use Wise. The rate is close to the Google rate, the fee is on the screen, and there is nothing hidden on the receiving side.
If she is on a wallet, use Remitly for the eSewa or Khalti send: it is one of the few UK-side apps that lands straight into the wallet as a balance. Take the first-transfer promo once, then compare Remitly’s second-transfer rate against Wise and Taptap Send at the same time of day.
If she is picking up cash at a counter, use Western Union or MoneyGram for the counter reach, or Remitly’s cash-pickup option if her town has a partner nearby. The counter costs more per pound sent than the bank or wallet options, and the arrival is the same day. It is worth the difference when the alternative is your grandmother trying to use an app she does not have.
Do not use a UK bank for any of these. On a £500 send the rate is worse than the newer apps by enough to eat a week of groceries in Kathmandu, and the fee sits on top of that. The apps exist because the banks were quietly taking too much. That is still true.