- If your family will spend what you send, in the Philippines, Kenya, India or elsewhere, the app's price is fine. Send local.
- If your family wants to keep dollars, in Turkey, Ghana, Egypt or elsewhere, check your app first. If it cannot pay dollars, send local. They can buy dollars at their end if the local rules allow it. Sending dollars by bank wire costs more, because each stage has its own fee.
- If you are sending to Nigeria, transfer companies must pay the family in naira. That rule dates from January 2024. A bank wire can still send dollars, and that is further down the piece.
- If you are paying a bill priced in dollars, such as a landlord in Buenos Aires, the app was never the right tool. The bill already made the choice for you.
If you have moved to the UK and are trying to bring your own savings across, not send money to family, you are in a different piece: read moving your savings to the UK instead. This one is for the sender.
Why any of this matters
The app gives you a rate based on the official market in the country the money is going to. In most countries that is close to the rate the family gets when they take the cash out, so what the app promises is what arrives.
A family may still want dollars, because they expect the local money to buy less later. That has its own section below.
In this piece, the hard currency is the dollar because that is what the market has settled on. For a few readers, the euro is the more natural choice. The logic is the same.
If the family will spend the money: send local
This section is for families in the Philippines, Kenya, India, Vietnam or Sri Lanka, and for any family that will spend the money where they live.
Send local. To Kenya, India and the Philippines, Wise uses the real exchange rate, the one you see on Google, and shows its fee before you send. The guides for each country carry the current prices. Wise or a direct-to-wallet app like Sendwave can put the money in the family's account in minutes.
Sending dollars into these countries first, only to have the family walk into a foreign exchange bureau at their end and swap them into pesos or shillings, adds a second charge you did not need to pay.
If the family wants to keep dollars: Turkey, Ghana, Egypt
If your family wants to keep dollars, check your app first. Some apps let you choose dollars on some routes, and others pay only local money. If yours offers dollars, compare what would arrive with what the family would get by buying dollars with the local money. The amount can be different between apps, and between cash and a bank account.
If your app pays only local money, send local. They can buy the dollars at their end with the local money the app delivered. Rules on who can buy dollars, and for what, are different in each country, so they should ask a bank or a licensed dealer first.
Sending dollars by bank wire into Turkey, Ghana or Egypt at family-transfer amounts is more expensive than sending local, because each stage costs you: your bank charges to wire dollars, the receiving bank charges to receive dollars, the family then pays another fee to move the dollars into a form they can actually spend. That stack of small charges beats the local exchange fee the app avoided.
The one exception is when the family has an ongoing bill priced in dollars. If they do, go to "When the invoice made the choice" below.
A dollar costs more in all three countries than it did a year ago. This is how much local money one dollar cost:
| Currency | A year ago | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Turkish lira | 42.09 | 50.02 |
| Ghanaian cedi | 10.90 | 11.66 |
| Egyptian pound | about 47 | 54.77 |
Turkey is the European Central Bank reference rate on 4 November 2025 and 4 November 2026. Ghana is the Bank of Ghana rate between banks, at the end of October 2025 and on 3 November 2026. Egypt now is the Central Bank of Egypt selling rate on 4 November 2026, and a year ago is a market reference rate on 4 November 2025.
Nigeria: transfer companies pay naira, a bank wire can pay dollars
Nigeria has two rules to know. Since 31 January 2024, the Central Bank of Nigeria has required money-transfer operators to pay out in naira only. Some transfer companies used to pay dollars in Nigeria, into dollar accounts or as cash. The January 2024 guidelines closed those routes. Sendwave's Nigeria page has said since at least November 2024 that US dollar sends are no longer permitted, including to dollar accounts.
Since 1 May 2026, those operators must also run transfers through special naira accounts, and use live market prices as a guide for their rates. A guide is not a fixed rate. The rate your app shows is the app's own, and rates can still differ between apps. There is more on the May rule in our piece on the settlement rule. The May rule covers those operators, not bank wires.
A bank wire into a domiciliary account can still get dollars to a family in Nigeria.
Your bank in London or New York sends dollars through the SWIFT network to your family's dollar account at GTBank, Access, Zenith or First Bank. It usually takes one to three working days, and a large wire can take longer if it is held for a central bank check. It arrives in dollars, into an account that can hold them. This is the right route for large sums: a lump for a house deposit, a semester of university fees, a medical bill. It is a poor route for a monthly £300.
These costs come from 
Grey's guide, as read on 4 November 2026. It counts a wire from a US bank, and Grey sells its own dollar accounts, so check your bank's price list too. The outgoing wire is $35 to $50 on your side. Each bank the wire passes through can take another $10 to $30. The Nigerian receiving bank takes about $10 to $15. Grey prints two totals, $60 to $100 in one place and $80 to $105 in another. On $500 those totals are 12 to 21 percent of the money. On $5,000 they are 1.2 to 2.1 percent. The dollar wire route works when the amount is large enough that a fixed fee stack disappears against it.
Changing the naira at their end works only for some needs. Under the central bank's guidelines of May 2024, a licensed bureau de change can sell dollars only for set purposes: travel allowance, medical bills overseas, school fees abroad, and exam and subscription fees. Buying dollars to keep is not on that list. A family that wants to hold dollars has no licensed bureau route.
If a service tells you it can pay your family in dollars through a card or a wallet, check it against the central bank's naira-only rule before you send.
When the invoice made the choice
Some readers are paying a bill quoted in dollars. That bill decides the currency for you.
The clearest example is Buenos Aires. Argentina changed its rent law in December 2023. In the second quarter of 2026, 25.4 percent of the flats listed for rent in the city were priced in dollars, according to the city's statistics institute, and most of those were in the north of the city, around Palermo, Belgrano and Recoleta. If your lease is priced in dollars and you pay it from abroad, the dollars need to arrive in a form the landlord accepts, such as a wire.
For a bill priced in dollars, skip the app and use a bank wire into a dollar account that you or a family member controls. That account then pays the bill directly, and whoever sent the bill sees a bank-transfer receipt in the currency they asked for.
If this is you, ignore the app comparison. Talk to a bank about the wire.
Ghana is different. Under a Bank of Ghana notice of 27 August 2025, nobody living in Ghana can price, invoice or take payment in foreign currency without a licence, and the notice names school fees. Foreign currency invoices can go only to foreign nationals living there or to people who live outside Ghana. If the bill is addressed to your family in Ghana, it should be in cedis, so send local.
A note on Argentina, because it changed. Until April 2025 the country had two very different rates: an official rate and a "blue" street rate that was much better. Since Milei's government lifted most currency controls, the blue rate has closed to within a few percent of the official one. That better street rate has mostly gone as a reason to send dollars. In 2026 the reason is a bill priced in dollars.
Lebanon: transfer companies pay dollars
Lebanon does not fit the boxes above.
After the 2019 crisis and the years of collapse that followed, the Lebanese pound has held near 89,500 to the dollar, as shown on Wise's rate page on 6 November 2026. Daily commerce in Beirut has quietly gone on in dollars for a long time, mostly as cash dollars. Bank dollars, the "lollars" that people sometimes had to accept at a heavy discount, are a separate story that mainly hurt the people who had them.
If your family is in Lebanon, the answer is dollars, ideally in a form they can hold as cash or spend directly. Since August 2020, Lebanon's central bank has required money transfer companies to pay out transfers from abroad in US dollars. Our Lebanon guide has the prices.
What you risk when you send dollars
Sending dollars is not automatically safer than sending local.
Cash dollars kept at home can be stolen. A dollar bank account can be frozen, or can face documentation the family does not have on hand, or can quietly stop working when a central bank changes a rule. The rules on buying dollars are different in each country, and in Nigeria a licensed bureau cannot sell them for a family to keep. A family that suddenly starts moving large sums of dollars into an account draws a kind of attention that a family receiving the monthly naira does not.
Dollars can still be the right answer, but think about these risks before you choose them.
The one-line answer for each of you
If your family will spend the money, in the Philippines, Kenya, India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka or elsewhere: send local through the app.
If your family in Turkey, Ghana or Egypt wants to keep dollars: check whether your app can pay dollars, and compare. If it cannot, send local, and they can buy dollars at their end if the local rules allow it. Only use a bank wire if you are sending a large sum for a specific dollar bill.
If you are sending to Nigeria: send naira through the app for anything monthly. Use a bank wire to a domiciliary account for large one-off sums. A licensed bureau sells dollars only for set purposes, not for a family to keep.
If you are paying a bill priced in dollars: use a bank wire, not the app. If the bill is addressed to your family in Ghana, it should be in cedis.
If you are sending to Lebanon: dollars, ideally in a form the family can hold as cash or spend directly.
If a central bank changes one of these rules and shifts one of the answers above next month, we will tell you here.
Corrections
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said the app has already picked the currency, that sending dollars costs more because each stage has its own fee, and that a family keeping dollars should still send local. Some apps let you choose dollars on some routes, and the stage fees hold for a bank wire, not for every app, so the page now says to check your app first.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said Argentina's blue rate was often 40 or 50 percent better than the official rate. The history of the gap does not fit that figure, so it is cut.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said the Lebanese pound was unified around one rate and that dollars had replaced the local currency. We have no primary source for either line, so the page now gives a dated rate and says transfer companies there pay in US dollars.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said apps must pay in naira in Nigeria, that the app does not let you pick the currency there, and that the January 2024 guidelines closed the routes apps used to pay dollars. That rule covers transfer companies, not every app, so the page now says transfer companies.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a Central Bank of Nigeria rule of 1 May 2026 made money transfer apps pay in naira, closed the dollar routes in May, and made the apps pay the official rate the central bank publishes. Paying out in naira comes from the January 2024 guidelines, the May rule covers special naira accounts and using live market prices as a guide, and each app sets its own rate.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a dollar wire to Nigeria takes three to five working days, and costs $25 to $45 to send and $10 to $25 at each bank on the way. Grey's current guide says one to three working days, $35 to $50 and $10 to $30, and it prints two totals that come to 12 to 21 percent of $500, so the page now gives those figures with their source.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said the family in Nigeria could buy dollars at a bureau de change, could reach a better rate that way, and that this was legally grey in most of what it does. Under the central bank's guidelines of May 2024 a licensed bureau sells dollars only for set purposes, not for a family to keep, and Boki has no current figure showing a better rate.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said what the apps offer in Nigeria had changed in the past twelve months, and that apps quote the official rate in every country. The naira-only rule is from January 2024, and the page now says the app's rate is based on the official market.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Wise keeps about half a percent above the real exchange rate to Kenya, and that India and the Philippines cost one to two percent. Wise uses the real exchange rate and charges a fee: on £200 on 4 November 2026 that was 1.9 percent to Kenya and under 1 percent to India and the Philippines.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Turkey's central bank does not try to fight the lira's fall, that the cedi went from 10.95 to about 12.25 in 2026, and that the Egyptian pound sat near 50 with a gap to a parallel market rate. The central bank steps in to stop a sharper fall, 12.25 was a bureau rate set against a rate between banks, the pound was 54.77 on 4 November 2026, and we have no current source for a gap, so the page now gives dated rates only.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a private university in Accra can invoice in dollars and that any dollar invoice should go by bank wire. A Bank of Ghana notice of 27 August 2025 bars this without a licence, apart from invoices to foreign nationals living in Ghana and to non-residents, and the page now says so. The school, visa and hospital bill examples are cut because we have no source for them.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Argentina's rent law changed in 2024 and that roughly nine in every ten leases in Palermo, Recoleta and Belgrano are in dollars. The change dates from December 2023, and the city's statistics institute counted 25.4 percent of the flats listed for rent in dollars in the second quarter of 2026.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said sending dollars gets the family more money in some countries, that the gap between official and street rates can be 10, 20 or 40 percent, that families in Turkey, Ghana and Egypt change money into dollars almost the day it arrives, that the cedi was losing value fast, that the peso is not falling fast enough to matter, and that buying from a bureau is legally grey or illegal in most countries named here. We have no current source for these lines, or the numbers do not support them, so they are cut.