Boki is for the person moving money across borders. Everything else here is written for her.
Where does the word “Boki” come from?
Boki is short for “aboki”. It is a word in the Nigerian Hausa language that means friend. It is also the everyday name for the men who change money on the street, informally, at rates the banks will not give, for people the banks will not always serve. Aboki, in that sense, is not a joke or a warning. It is a real service that reaches ordinary people, and often the only one that does.
Who Boki is for
Someone tired, at the end of a long day, working out whether the 200 pounds she is about to send will arrive as 185 or 190. Someone who has been overcharged by her bank once too often. Someone who knows the money should have gone further than it did.
Not the bank looking at her as a transaction. Not the fintech treating her as a growth chart. Her.
What Boki does
We write plain guides that say, for a given route, which provider to use, which to avoid, and why. Sending money to Lithuania. To Ghana. To the Philippines. Real numbers, the one catch to watch, and nothing more than she needs to decide.
Each week we also publish the Friday number: what a fixed amount sent to one country really arrived as this week, across the major providers, with names attached. Whether the providers like it or not.
What Boki is not
Boki is not a comparison widget. A widget can only say “this rate is a little lower than that one”. It cannot tell you not to use that provider on this route because you will lose 12 pounds on 200 and never see the loss on the screen. We can, and we do.
We are not a rate desk either. There are people who run a live rate feed and do that job well. We are not trying to be them. We explain what the numbers mean.
Why this is called Boki
An aboki is, in the end, a stranger you trust with your money because he gives you a rate you cannot get anywhere else. His living depends on that rate being fair. That is the whole idea behind this site.