Sending money to the UK from India, Kenya, or Nigeria is not the mirror of sending the other way. The rule that decides whether your transfer even leaves is on your side, not the UK’s, and it is different in each of the three countries. The apps and comparison pages online are written for the sender going the other way. Almost none of them tells you the rule you actually need to know.
From India
The rule is the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, or LRS. Every resident Indian is allowed to send up to USD 250,000 (about £188,000) abroad per financial year (April to March) for a permitted purpose: education, medical, gift to a relative, travel, investment. That cap is per person, not per transfer, and for a parent paying UK tuition or supporting a UK-based child, it is far higher than you will use.
The second half of the rule is the tax. On the total you send in the year above ₹10 lakh (about £9,400), the bank collects TCS (Tax Collected at Source) at the point of transfer. For education and medical purposes, TCS is 2%. For everything else, it is 20%. Both rates apply only to the amount above ₹10 lakh, not to the whole transfer. And TCS is not a fee. It is advance tax, credited back when you file your return.
If the money is for a UK university and the loan is from a bank or lender on the government’s approved list, the tax is nil.
You will send it one of three ways.
Through your Indian bank. HDFC, ICICI, SBI, Axis and the others all move money out under the LRS rule as an international bank wire. You will need a PAN, the bank’s outward-remittance form (Form A2), and to write on the form what the money is for (education, gift, and so on). The bank charges a fixed fee (around ₹500 to ₹1,500 depending on the bank) plus a margin on the rate. That margin is where the real cost sits. On a large tuition payment, the bank rate can be one to three percent worse than the rate you can see on Google.
Through Wise. Wise has a licence to send money out of India, but the service has been closed to new Indian customers more than once and may be closed on the day you check. When it is open, the rate is close to Google’s and the fee is on the screen.
For UK university tuition specifically, most universities put a specialist payer such as Flywire or Convera into the student finance portal. Both handle the Indian paperwork for you and quote a total in rupees at the point of payment. The rate they use is not always the best, but the paperwork is simpler than a bank wire for a first-time sender. Check the university’s finance page before you assume the bank is the only route.
From Kenya
The rule on the Kenyan side is thin. There is no per-person quarterly or annual cap on personal outbound transfers. Under the Central Bank of Kenya’s foreign exchange guidelines, residents can buy and sell foreign currency through a licensed bank up to USD 10,000 (about £7,500) without documentation. Above that, the bank keeps a record and asks for a source-of-funds explanation. That is the number to hold in your head. Below it, the transfer is a routine bank instruction. Above it, expect to answer questions.
Two routes work reasonably well.
Wise accepts KES as a sending currency for Kenyans with a Wise multi-currency account. You fund the transfer from a Kenyan bank account. The rate matches the one you can see on Google; the fee is on the screen; the money usually reaches the UK account inside a day. Wise does not ship its debit card to Kenya, but the send flow works. On smaller amounts (up to a few thousand pounds), Wise is usually the cheapest option.
Revolut also does a Kenya-to-UK send from a Kenyan bank account into pounds, either into another Revolut account or as an international wire into a UK bank. The rate is close to Google’s. If your UK recipient already has Revolut, the transfer between the two Revolut accounts clears in seconds.
Your Kenyan bank will also send by international bank wire. That works, and for large amounts it may be the route the bank pushes you towards. The fee will be higher and the rate margin worse than Wise for anything under about USD 5,000 (roughly £3,750). Above that, the bank’s own rate desk sometimes matches the fintechs.
One small rule to know. The Money Remittance Regulations require Kenyan foreign currency to move through bank accounts, not wallet-to-wallet. Do not try to route your outbound send through M-Pesa. M-Pesa is for inside Kenya; a transfer to the UK has to start from a bank account.
From Nigeria
The formal rule in Nigeria is the Central Bank’s Personal Travel Allowance. Any Nigerian resident with a valid international ticket and a visa can buy up to USD 4,000 (about £3,000) per quarter from a licensed bank at the official rate. The Business Travel Allowance is USD 5,000 per quarter, also on documentation. Both need paperwork; neither is a personal-remittance allowance in the way India’s yearly quota is.
If the money is for a UK student, a UK relative, or a UK bill, the Central Bank’s answer is short. Use the travel allowance if you are actually travelling, or send it as an international bank wire through your Nigerian bank if the bank has the dollars or pounds to sell you.
The gap in that answer is where every Nigerian parent sending to the UK sits. UK tuition alone is often £15,000 to £30,000 a year. Rent in London is £900 to £1,500 a month. The Central Bank’s official channel does not cover the size of the transfer a real UK-facing family actually needs.
The licences that let services like Remitly and WorldRemit move money into Nigeria only work one way. Money coming into Nigeria settles through their accounts at Nigerian banks. Money going the other way has no equivalent channel. That leaves you with three real options.
Your Nigerian bank, by international wire. If your bank has dollars or pounds to sell you against your naira balance, this is the formal route. Fees are typically NGN 5,000 to 15,000 plus a rate margin. It is slow (two to five business days), and on a big transfer it can be interrupted for days while the bank sources the foreign currency. This is the route the Central Bank wants you to take.
Wise does not accept NGN as a sending currency. If you are in Nigeria with only a naira balance, you cannot Wise reverse. Wise works fine sending into Nigeria (a family member in London can pay you in naira through it), but not sending from Nigeria out.
The parallel-market route. Every Nigerian sender already knows this. There is a second dollar-to-naira rate on the street, at the moment about ₦48 higher per dollar than the Central Bank’s official window (as of late July 2026; the gap moves week to week). Nigerians route large sends by exchanging naira for dollars off-book with a bureau or an aboki, then wiring the dollars out from a domiciliary account (a dollar or pound account at a Nigerian bank) or through a family member’s UK account. Legally this sits in a grey zone the Central Bank would prefer did not exist. Practically, it is how a big share of the UK tuition and rent traffic actually leaves.
Stablecoins are the other real route. A stablecoin is a digital token pegged to the US dollar; one token is meant to be worth one dollar. On trading platforms like Breet, Nigerians swap naira for these dollar tokens at a rate closer to the street rate than to the bank’s, then move the tokens to a service that pays them out into a UK bank in pounds. Binance shut down its naira trading in March 2024; the activity has moved to other platforms. Nigeria leads the world in stablecoin use for a reason. This is not exotic; it is what real families use for real tuition bills.
The Central Bank’s official channel is not big enough for a real UK tuition or rent bill; Nigerian families route around it. On the day you send, check the parallel-market and stablecoin rates against your bank’s wire quote, and use whichever route gets the pounds landed. Save every receipt.
What the money looks like when it lands
Four things worth knowing on the UK side.
The name on your recipient’s bank statement is the provider’s business name, not yours. Wise shows as “TRANSFERWISE” or “WISE PAYMENTS”. A bank wire often shows as your Nigerian or Indian bank’s international name. If your daughter searches her statement for your name, she will not find the payment. Tell her to search for the provider or the bank.
The arrival time depends on the route. A Wise transfer from Kenya or (when it is open) India is usually inside a day, often inside an hour. A bank wire from an Indian bank takes one to three working days. From Nigeria, a bank wire can take three to five working days and sometimes longer if the sending bank is short on dollars. Add a UK bank holiday and Monday becomes Tuesday.
The UK receiving bank may ask your recipient about the source of the funds. This has become more common since October 2024, when new UK rules made receiving banks jointly responsible for reimbursing scam victims up to £85,000. Receiving banks now check who is sending, why, and whether the pattern fits the recipient’s normal profile. A one-off transfer for university tuition, backed by a letter from you explaining what it is, will clear. Anything unexplained above about £10,000 to £15,000 may be paused while the bank asks. Save the transfer receipt. Save the bank fee receipt. If it is a gift, write your recipient a short letter saying so.
The exchange rate you sent at is not the rate the recipient sees. The recipient sees the pounds that arrived. If you sent 300,000 rupees and 2,700 pounds landed, she will not know whether that was a good rate or a bad one. If it matters to you, check the real rate on the day you send (search “INR to GBP” or “KES to GBP” on Google), compare it to what your app quoted, and the gap is what the transfer really cost you.
The other pieces on money moving between two systems, from savings that have to follow you to the UK to the choice of which currency to send in, sit under between systems.