What a £200 send looks like on each side
At the time of writing, £1 is worth about 15.5 cedis on the real exchange rate, the one Google shows if you search it. On £200 that is roughly GHS 3,100 (about £200).
Straight to the MoMo wallet. The money arrives in your mother's wallet in minutes. On the receive side, MTN charges her nothing to see it there. If she decides to cash the full amount out at an MTN agent, MTN takes a flat GHS 20 (about £1.30) from the withdrawal. She walks out of the booth with about GHS 3,080, roughly £198.70. If she pays with the wallet at a shop, that GHS 20 does not apply (see below).
To a Ghana bank account. The money arrives in a Fidelity, GCB or Ecobank account, often the next working day rather than in minutes. There is no MTN cash-out charge, because MTN is not involved. There is instead a trip to the branch, a queue, and sometimes an ATM fee at the end of it. The app fee into a bank is usually a touch higher than the fee into a wallet on the same provider, so the sender's side comes out slightly worse too.
On the plain arithmetic of a £200 send cashed out in one go, the two routes are within a pound or two of each other. The wallet is faster, which is the difference that matters for most routine sends.
Catch
The GHS 20 is only one cash-out tier. On a withdrawal between GHS 50 and GHS 2,000, MTN charges 1 percent of the amount instead. On GHS 1 to GHS 50, the fee is 50 pesewas. Three small withdrawals cost more than one large one. If your mother knows she will need the full amount, taking it out in one visit saves her money.
A word on the e-levy
If you have been reading older guides, you have probably seen a 1 percent "e-levy" line that was supposed to apply to every MoMo transaction. That tax was repealed in April 2025 and has been off every MoMo receipt since. Transfers from abroad were exempt even before the repeal. The number that remains on the receive side is MTN's own cash-out charge above. There is no state tax on top of it.
A separate 0.75 percent "MoMo to bank" fee was announced in May 2026 and suspended by the Bank of Ghana inside twenty-four hours. It has not been reintroduced. For the ordinary cash-out at a corner agent, nothing has changed.
Which UK apps go direct to the wallet
Every major UK app on this route pays into an MTN MoMo wallet in 2026. The choice is about the exchange rate they give you, not whether they can reach the wallet.
Wise uses the real exchange rate and shows a visible percentage fee on the quote screen. It pays into MTN, AirtelTigo and Telecel wallets. Wise caps its mobile wallet payout at around GHS 2,800 per transfer. At today's rate, £200 is roughly GHS 3,100, which sits above that cap, so Wise will route the payout to a Ghana bank account instead. For a wallet payout on Wise, split the send into two smaller transfers.
LemFi charges no visible fee and makes its margin in the exchange rate. On a £200 send it usually arrives within a pound of Wise, direct to the MTN wallet in minutes.
Sendwave also shows no fee, and pays direct to MTN wallets. Its rate on this route sits a touch off Wise and LemFi; put £200 in each app side by side before you send and pick the larger cedi figure.
WorldRemit, Remitly, Taptap Send and Western Union all pay direct to the MTN wallet from the UK, with their own mix of a small flat fee and a rate margin. The simplest check is the one the Ghana root guide names: open two apps side by side, put £200 in each, and compare the cedi figure at the bottom. The one with the larger cedi number is the cheaper send that day.
The lever that deletes the cash-out charge
MTN runs a merchant-pay system called MoMo Pay. A shopkeeper, a school, a utility, or a market trader has their own short code (something like *170#); your mother dials it from her phone, picks the merchant, and pays straight from the wallet balance. The merchant absorbs the fee. She pays MTN nothing.
If the money you send is going to be spent on something anyway (shopping, airtime, school fees, a utility bill), the GHS 20 cash-out charge is avoidable. Keep the balance on the wallet and pay with MoMo Pay. The receive-side fee drops to zero.
The full map, country by country, is in the cash-out piece.
So, bank or wallet
For your routine £200 send to a parent, send to the MoMo wallet. Pick the UK app whose rate is closest to Google's on the day. Tell your mother to spend at the shop with MoMo Pay where she can, and to pull the rest out in one visit rather than three.
If the money has to end up in a bank account for a specific reason (school fees the school wants paid by transfer, a landlord who only takes bank), the bank route still works. Wise and WorldRemit pay into GCB, Fidelity, Ecobank and Stanbic directly. For routine family spending, send to the wallet.
Rates and fees quoted here are current as of 7 October 2026. If the cedi moves, the numbers on this page move with it.
Corrections
- 2026-10-07: An earlier version of this page said a £200 Wise send was "close to" the GHS 2,800 mobile wallet cap. At the rate quoted on the page (£1 ≈ 15.5 GHS), £200 is roughly GHS 3,100, which sits above the cap. The line has been corrected to say Wise will route a £200 payout to a Ghana bank account instead, with a note that splitting into two smaller transfers keeps the wallet route open.
- 2026-10-07: An earlier version of this page said Sendwave paid direct to MTN and AirtelTigo wallets. Sendwave's own Ghana pages only name MTN. The AirtelTigo mention has been removed.
- 2026-10-07: An earlier version of this page said the Wise fee on this route was "usually around 0.5 to 1 percent" and that Sendwave's rate was "typically one to three percent off the real rate". Neither figure was tied to a live quote. Both lines have been softened: Wise now reads "a visible percentage fee on the quote screen"; Sendwave now reads "a touch off Wise and LemFi", with the recommendation to compare £200 side by side in each app.