The app updated last week. You went to send home the way you always do, and something on the screen was different. Maybe a question you have never been asked. Maybe a lower limit than the month before. Maybe a hold on a transfer that used to clear in an hour. Somewhere, a rule changed. You did not read the rule and you will not read the rule. You want to know what you have to do differently to get the money home this week.
The change almost always shows up in the app as one of five shapes. Once you can name what you are looking at, you know what to do about it, and you know whether it is a one-off or the new normal. The five shapes work whether the app is Wise, Sendwave, Revolut, Remitly, LemFi, or the one your cousin uses.
The five shapes a rule change takes in the app
1. A new field on the send screen
The app asks you something it has never asked you before. “Where did this money come from?” “What is your relationship to the recipient?” “Please enter the recipient’s PAN” (for a send to India). “Please enter the recipient’s BVN” (for a send to Nigeria). You cannot tap past the screen without answering.
This is almost always the country you are sending from, or the country you are sending to, tightening its check on who is moving money and to whom. It will not go away. Answer plainly. If the money is from your salary, say so. If the recipient is your mother, say so. The app is going to ask this every time you send now.
2. A lower cap, or a new cap you have just crossed
You used to be able to send £5,000 in one go, and now the app caps you at £2,500 without an extra document. Or the app has a monthly limit you have just hit for the first time.
This is usually the sending-side rules getting tighter about how much a person can move without extra paperwork. Two things to do. Send the amount the app will let you send now, then send the rest split across the week or the month. And if the app offers to lift the cap in exchange for a document (a payslip, a bank statement, a tax return), send the document. Do not open a second account to route around the cap. The second account is now linked to you by name, and both accounts get flagged.
3. A hold that was not there before
The transfer used to clear in an hour. It has been sitting at “processing” for a day, or “under review” for three. Support has replied with the same three sentences twice.
The hold is usually the bank or the app protecting itself against a scam-reimbursement claim. On any new recipient, send small first. Send the smallest amount the app will let you send, wait for it to clear, then send the real amount. The app treats a first send to a new person as risky and a second send to a known person as routine. If the hold is on a recipient you have sent to for years and it has not moved in three business days, use the escalation letter.
4. A currency or a whole country that disappeared
You go to send to Nigeria, and the naira delivery option is greyed out. Or the app now only offers dollars on a route that used to be local currency. Sometimes the whole country is off the list for a week.
This is the loudest of the five shapes and usually the shortest lived. A rule on the receiving side has tightened, one or two providers have paused while they sort it, and the route reopens over a couple of weeks with a slightly different price. Check the destination page for the country (/destinations/nigeria/ for Nigeria) for which providers are running that route this week rather than last week. Do not keep tapping the greyed-out option; it is greyed out on purpose.
5. A rate that has changed shape
The app’s rate on a route stops moving with the market. Or a label appears that says something like “official rate.” The amount arriving at the other end is different from what your friend got last month on the same amount.
This is usually the receiving country’s central bank pinning the exchange rate the apps have to use. It is not a fee change. It affects how much lands on the other side, and it can flip week to week which provider is cheapest. Before you decide the app has got expensive, check what other people are getting on the same route this week. If the rate has moved for a rule reason, every provider is moving with it.
The one-line rule
When the app changes what it asks you or how it behaves, a rule changed. Read the change from your side of the screen, not from the release notes. Answer plainly. Do not route around.
Two examples of the framework
Naira delivery briefly disappeared this spring. The Central Bank of Nigeria’s new rule for how money-transfer apps do the naira side of your transfer started to bind on 1 May 2026 (the circular was issued on 24 March 2026). For a couple of weeks in May, senders opening their app to send to Lagos saw a handful of providers with naira delivery greyed out. Shape 4.
Then the route reopened, and the exchange rate on the surviving providers moved closer to the Google rate than it had been. Shape 5. If you use Wise or LemFi you probably did not notice more than one weekend of “coming back soon.” If you were using a smaller app you had not heard of, it may not have come back. What the rule actually says, and what has not changed for you, is in this piece.
UK banks got slower on first-time recipients last autumn. On 7 October 2024, the UK’s payments watchdog (the Payment Systems Regulator) put a new rule into force that made the sending bank or app responsible for reimbursing customers who got tricked by scam transfers.
Every UK bank and every UK-based sending app had a strong reason overnight to be slower and stricter on the first transfer to any new recipient. What you saw in the app was a longer set of scam warnings and, on some banks, a same-day hold on a first send. Shape 3. The extra friction is not going away, because the reimbursement rule is not going away. Send small first, wait for it to clear, then send the real amount.
What to do next time the app changes on you
Read the app’s own message plainly and answer what it is asking. If it is asking for a document, send the document; the message with the document goes through faster than three messages complaining. Do not open a second account and do not put a different name on the recipient. Both trip flags on every send you make from now on. If you have sent to this person before and this time the money is stuck for more than three business days, use the escalation letter.
The app you use every month will keep changing. Rules will keep changing behind it. You will keep sending. Between the three, this framework is what you keep in your pocket.
For more on money that moves against the usual direction, and on questions the transfer apps do not think to ask, see the between-systems hub.