The answer depends on which country the money is going to. On 5 November 2026 we priced £200 both ways to nine countries. In four, USDT was level with the best app or a little behind it. In three it was about 1 percent ahead. In India it was about 5 percent ahead, before one exchange fee we could not read, and in Venezuela about 12 percent. Those USDT figures are for a careful user who makes no mistakes. And for some readers the crypto route is not the right answer whatever the country, because the chain has too many places where a wrong click loses everything.
Find your country in the table, read its note, and go. For the wider question of which currency your family should receive, start here; this page is the more specific cousin, part of the Money on the wrong side of a border hub.
What £200 delivered on 5 November 2026
| Sending £200 to | Best app we read | USDT after costs |
|---|---|---|
| Venezuela | 240,855 bolivars (Remitly) | about 269,100 bolivars |
| India | 25,366 rupees (Skrill) | about 26,500 rupees, before CoinDCX's own fee |
| Argentina | 437,758 pesos (Western Union, to a mobile wallet) | about 443,100 pesos |
| Vietnam | 6,856,109 dong (Instarem) | about 6,941,800 dong |
| Sri Lanka | 89,022 rupees (Instarem) | about 89,900 rupees |
| Turkey | 13,406 lira (Instarem) | about 13,360 lira |
| Nigeria | ₦370,086 (Remitly) | about ₦368,900 |
| Philippines | 16,813 pesos (Instarem) | about 16,740 pesos |
| Kenya | 34,816 shillings (Instarem) | about 34,630 shillings |
The app figure is what the family received, with any fee taken out of the £200. Instarem and Skrill are from Wise's public price feed, read between 08:27 and 10:08 GMT. Remitly is its own calculator at its regular rate, not its first-send offer. Western Union is its own price at 13:52 GMT, at its regular rate, not its first-send price. Prices change by the hour, so check your own app before you send.
The USDT figure starts with £200 on Kraken's trading screen. That bought 269.47 USDT. Kraken's 0.20 percent fee and the network fee left 267.93 USDT. The coins were then sold at that morning's price in the family's country: on an exchange in Nigeria (Quidax), India (CoinDCX) and Turkey (Binance), and in peer-to-peer ads everywhere else. Argentina was read again at 13:52 GMT, the same hour as Western Union, and that left 267.89 USDT.
In Nigeria and Turkey we took off the exchange's published fee, which is 0.2 percent at Binance in Turkey. For the ads we took off Binance's top rate of 0.35 percent. The Sri Lanka price is from OKX's ads, the lowest of three sites, and we kept Binance's rate there so that the figure can be compared. For India we took off the 1 percent tax but not CoinDCX's own fee, because we could not read it.
The Philippines price is a Binance ad, so your family may not be able to sell at that price. Binance's website 
was reported open again in the Philippines by July 2026, after a block from 2024. But in June 2026 the central bank 
said neither Binance nor its local partner held its licence for crypto firms, and the partner said they do not move pesos. We found no later change when we looked on 11 November.
Kraken says the price on its instant-buy button includes a margin, so buying that way leaves less. None of these figures counts the risks further down this page.
Wise uses the real exchange rate and charges a fee. On £200 on 5 November that fee was £1.49 to India, £1.59 to the Philippines, £1.70 to Nigeria, £2.42 to Vietnam, £2.85 to Sri Lanka and £3.79 to Kenya. That is 0.7 to 1.9 percent of what you send. Sendwave charged no fee to Nigeria or Kenya, £0.99 to India and Vietnam, and £1.99 to the Philippines. Its rate was 0.2 to 1.3 percent below Wise's. It gave no price for Sri Lanka, Turkey, Argentina or Venezuela.
The four readers this is for
If you send to Venezuela or India, USDT paid clearly more on 5 November. Read your country in the notes below, because India has a legal catch, then read what can go wrong before you decide.
If you send to a country where the formal route is broken or restricted, the question for you is not "cheaper" but "at all". Read the section on where the formal route is broken.
If you send to Argentina, Nigeria, Turkey, the Philippines, Kenya, Vietnam or Sri Lanka, you may have been told crypto is cheaper. On 5 November it saved nothing, or about 1 percent. Skip to where the app is still the better choice and then stop.
Someone in the family or in a WhatsApp group may be offering to walk you through the buy for the first time. If you do not know a seed phrase from a wallet address, skip to what can go wrong and read only that. The rest is not for you today.
Two paths, one has four toll booths
Sending with a transfer app is two things: a fee you can see, and an exchange rate that has a small margin built into it. The app takes both and shows you the amount that arrives.
Sending with a stablecoin is four costs, stacked.
- You spend pounds and get USDT or USDC. The exchange charges a fee and takes a small margin on the pound-to-dollar conversion.
- You move the coin to another wallet. That transfer has a network fee. On 5 November 2026 Kraken charged 1 USDT on the Tron network and about 0.7 USDT on Ethereum. Binance charged 4 USDT and 0.6 USDT.
- Your family, or you on her behalf, sells the USDT for naira, bolivars, lira or whatever the local currency is. That sale also has a fee and a margin.
- You carry the time and the risk. Every step has a way to go wrong that the app does not: identity checks that lock the funds for days, wallet addresses typed one digit off and the money gone forever, buyers who take the coins and never pay, exchange accounts that freeze mid-transfer.
Picture two paths from your bank to the family's cash. The app path has one toll booth. The crypto path has four. The crypto path only wins when toll booth number three, the sale of the coin at the family's end, gives back more than the other three combined take.
Notes by country
Venezuela. On 5 November 2026 the central bank's rate was about 895 bolivars to the dollar. In peer-to-peer ads inside Binance, USDT sold at about 1,008. That gap is not what you gain. What you gain is the difference from an app you can use.
Remitly was the one UK app we could price: 1,216.38 bolivars to the pound and a £1.99 fee, paid to a bank in Venezuela. MoneyGram has a Venezuela page, but we could not read its price. Through USDT the family ended with about 12 percent more, about £23 on £200. If someone tells you they are sending to a family member in Caracas via USDT they are not doing something exotic, they are doing what many people in the country do daily.
Argentina. For years the peso blue rate was 50 to 100 percent above the official rate and USDT into a Buenos Aires P2P market was one of the best ways anywhere to get more money home. In April 2025 the government lifted most currency controls, and by 4 November 2026 the gap between those two rates had collapsed to about zero.
USDT has its own price. On 5 November it sold at about 1,660 pesos in Binance's peer-to-peer ads. Wise's rate came to about 1,543 pesos a dollar, far below that, but Western Union paid about 1,658. Its regular fee was £3.99 to a mobile wallet and £6.99 or more to a bank.
After costs USDT paid about 1 percent more than Western Union to a wallet, about £2 on £200, and about 3 percent more than Western Union to a bank, about £5. On a first send Western Union charged no fee, and the family received 446,669 pesos, about 1 percent more than through USDT. So the app is fine here, if you pick one that pays near that level. If a friend last talked to you about USDT into Argentina in 2023, her numbers are out of date, so use the table.
India. On 5 November USDT sold at about 100 rupees on CoinDCX, an Indian exchange, while Wise's rate came to about 94.4 rupees a dollar. After costs that was about 5 percent more than the best app, about £9 on £200, before CoinDCX's own fee. Tax takes some of it back. Indian law takes 1 percent off a sale once the buyer has paid more than ₹10,000 in a tax year, or ₹50,000 if the buyer is an individual without a large business. It also charges 30 percent tax on any profit. The table counts the 1 percent. It does not count the 30 percent or CoinDCX's own fee, which we could not read.
Until the country's central bank says whether a family may do this, we would use the app. We found no text from India's central bank that says a family may or may not do this.
In June 2026 India's Enforcement Directorate 
said it had searched firms that moved money into India this way: USDT bought abroad, sold on Indian exchanges, and the rupees paid to the receiver. It said it suspected unauthorised transfers under India's foreign exchange law. The searches were aimed at firms, not at a family selling its own coins. On 4 and 5 November 2026 the same agency searched offices of CoinDCX, the exchange whose price we used. It said the search found that CoinDCX turned customers' rupees into USDT and sent it to exchanges abroad to fill their trades, outside the legal route for money leaving India.
Nigeria. After the costs, USDT left about ₦1,250 more than Wise and about ₦1,200 less than Remitly's regular rate on 5 November. That is under £1 either way, so use the app. The USDT price is from Quidax, a Nigerian exchange, and it is one reading on one day. Binance closed all naira services in March 2024, and Quidax ended its peer-to-peer service in January 2026.
In July 2026 the president signed an order on crypto firms in Nigeria. Under it, each firm registers with the central bank or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), depending on what it does. The central bank's own 
rules for crypto platforms started on 5 November 2026. A platform that changes USDT into naira, or matches buyers and sellers, now needs the central bank's licence or approval. A platform that was already working has until early May 2027 to apply. Until then it can keep working at its present size, on the central bank's conditions.
The central bank says it will publish a public list of the firms it licenses. We found no list on 11 November 2026. Until there is one, ask the platform which regulator it is registered with, and look for its name on the 
SEC's list of fintech firms. A name on that list means the firm is in an SEC test programme, not that it has a full licence. If the platform cannot tell you its regulator, use a different one.
For what each app delivered on a £200 transfer on 7 July, see the July Friday number for Nigeria.
Turkey. This case is slightly different. There is no black-market rate to reach. What there is instead is fast inflation and a lira that loses value against the dollar on a slow, managed drift. Your family in Istanbul can convert what you send into dollars the same week it arrives, because holding lira is worth less by the next month.
On 5 November USDT sold on Binance's exchange in Turkey at about the same price as Wise's rate, so the table shows no gain in lira. Sending USDT rather than lira only helps if your family wants dollars, because it skips one conversion at her end. That saves the small margin the local exchange bureau charges on the swap. Whether it is worth the extra steps depends on how much you send and how often. If it is once a month for a few hundred pounds, the app is fine. If it is regular and larger, it starts to matter.
Note also that in Turkey it is legal to own crypto but illegal to use it as payment for goods and services. Your family can hold and sell USDT; she cannot pay her rent in it.
Where the formal route is broken
For a smaller group of readers the question is not cheaper. The formal route is hard to reach, or open only in ways they cannot use. Sudan for parts of the past year. Lebanon, where the local currency system has effectively collapsed and USD in hand is the only unit of account that works. Some months in and out of Iran or Russia depending on which sanctions rule is active.
For these readers the arithmetic is different. USDT is not competing with a bank transfer. It is competing with cash carried across a border by hand, or a favour called in through a friend of a friend.
What this piece cannot do is walk you through the specifics of any one country. Rules change month to month, platforms come and go, and the wrong step in a sanctions setting is worse than a lost transfer. If this is your situation, treat the general framework above as background and get country-specific advice from someone using the same route this month.
Where the app is still the better choice
For most readers this section is the whole answer. If your family is in Nigeria, Turkey, Kenya or the Philippines, USDT was level with the best app on 5 November or a little behind it. Adding a crypto layer there means paying four charges for no gain, and with Wise the money usually arrives in minutes.
In Argentina, Vietnam and Sri Lanka USDT was about 1 percent ahead of the best app, £2 to £3 on £200. One wrong wallet address loses the whole £200. Stay with the app.
If you are in this group and someone has told you USDT is much cheaper for your country, these figures do not show it. Ask them for the amount that arrived, after every fee.
What can go wrong
Every step of the crypto chain has a way to fail that a transfer app does not. This is not fear-mongering. These are things that happen to people every week.
Identity checks can lock your funds. New account, first large deposit, and the exchange freezes the account for a review that takes days. Your money is not lost, but you cannot reach it until the review ends. If the family needs it Tuesday and the exchange has decided to look at your ID on Friday, that is the trip you promised her that she does not now take.
Wallet addresses get typed wrong. A wallet address is a long string of letters and numbers. There is no "are you sure this is who you meant?" prompt. If you send USDT to an address that does not exist in the form you meant, the funds are gone and there is nobody to call. Always copy and paste the address, never type it. Send a small test amount first for any new destination.
The person on the other side of a peer-to-peer trade sometimes takes the coins and never pays. That market is a market of real people, not the exchange itself. The other side sees your USDT come in, marks the trade as paid on their side using a screenshot they edited, and disappears. If the exchange has an escrow system and you use it, this is much rarer. If you release the coins first because the other person has been nice, it is common. The rule everyone in this world learns eventually: do not release the coins until the money is visible in your actual bank app, not in a screenshot she sent you.
Exchanges freeze. The whole exchange has your funds sitting on it while you wait to trade. If the exchange has a bad week (regulatory action, a bank withdrawing a service, an internal fraud investigation) you may not be able to move that balance for days. Take the coins off the exchange to your own wallet if you are holding for any length of time. But then you own the risk of the last one.
Seed phrases get lost. A self-custody wallet is protected by a twelve or twenty-four word phrase. Nothing else protects it. If you lose the phrase, or give it to anyone else, the money is gone. Nobody at any wallet company can recover it. If you are not ready to keep a piece of paper somewhere you will find it in ten years and never show anyone, do not hold coins yourself.
If the person offering to walk you through your first USDT purchase is not comfortable talking through each of these five failure modes with you, plainly and without impatience, walk away and use the app.
Your country in one line
In Venezuela the answer is yes, if you can do every step safely. USDT paid about 12 percent more than the one UK app we could price.
In India, use the app for now. USDT paid about 5 percent more before CoinDCX's own fee, but your family carries the tax on it, and India's enforcement agency has searched firms that moved money in this way.
In Turkey, use the app unless your family wants dollars. USDT then saves one currency conversion at her end, but the saving only outweighs the extra steps if what you send is regular and larger.
In Nigeria, use the app. USDT was within £1 of the apps on 5 November and it takes far more work.
For Argentina, the Philippines, Kenya, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, use the app. Any saving from USDT was too small to pay for the risk.
Someone may be offering to walk you through your first USDT purchase. If that person cannot talk through the five failure modes above plainly and without irritation, the crypto route is not the right answer for you today whatever the country. Use the app.
Corrections
- 2026-11-11: An earlier version of this page gave only a May 2026 report that Binance was blocked in the Philippines. Its website was reported open again by July 2026, so the page now says that and gives the central bank's June 2026 position on Binance's licence.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said a stablecoin costs more than your transfer app in most countries, that USDT is not cheaper for the Philippines, Kenya, India, Vietnam or Sri Lanka, and that a crypto step there saves nothing. On 5 November 2026 USDT after costs delivered more than the best app we read in India, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, so those lines are gone and the page now shows both figures.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said the app is close to the real exchange rate and delivers in minutes in five countries, and that a country with two rates has a second rate everyone uses. Wise's fee was 0.7 to 1.9 percent of £200 on 5 November 2026, so the page now gives the fees. The minutes line now names Wise and says usually, and the "everyone uses" line had no source and is cut.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page answered yes for Venezuela with no app price beside it, and said the gap between the official and peer-to-peer rates pays for the effort. That gap is not what a sender gains, so the page now sets USDT against Remitly's price.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page told Nigerian readers to ask around for a peer-to-peer platform, and said the answer had changed most for Nigeria without saying what it was. Those lines are gone, and the page now says to use the app and shows why.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said the case for USDT into Argentina had largely ended and that the app is fine now. On 5 November 2026 USDT sold at about 1,660 pesos a dollar, against about 1,543 at Wise's rate and about 1,658 at Western Union, so the page now says the app is fine if it pays near that level.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said the Turkish lira is fully convertible, and it gave Turkey a qualified yes. We could not confirm the first line, so it is cut. On 5 November 2026 USDT showed no gain in lira, so the page now says to use the app unless your family wants dollars.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page gave Wise into Kenya as about half a percent above the real rate, India as one to two percent all-in, Sendwave into a Philippine wallet as similar, and the app route in four countries as within a fraction of a percent. Those lines were undated and wrong, so they are cut: on 4 November 2026 Wise charged the real rate plus a fee, £3.79 on £200 to Kenya and £1.49 on £200 to India. The words "stable countries" and "stable Asia" are gone too.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said the transfer app quotes Nigeria's official rate, that USDT could close a gap of about 3.5 percent, and that crypto wins clearly in two or three countries. On 4 November 2026 Wise's rate was about 2 percent above the official rate and USDT sold for 0.2 to 0.6 percent above Wise on one Nigerian exchange, before the other costs, so those claims are cut.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Nigeria's gap ran at 40 to 60 percent through 2024, which was wrong for 2024. It also said a peer-to-peer market inside a Nigerian exchange reaches close to the parallel rate, that Nigerian ISPs block Binance, and how Busha works; those lines could not be confirmed, so all four are cut.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page gave Venezuela's rates as around 750 and 840 and Argentina's gap as two to five percent. Both now carry figures from 4 November 2026. The line that about 85 percent of transactions in Venezuela are in USDT had no named measurement, so it is cut.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a Tron transfer usually costs under a dollar and an Ethereum transfer five to ten dollars or more. On 4 November 2026 Binance charged 4 USDT to withdraw on Tron and 0.6 USDT on Ethereum, so the figures are cut.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said any sale of crypto for rupees in India triggers a 1 percent tax, and it cited Sections 194S and 115BBH. Yearly thresholds apply, so the paragraph is cut.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page put Turkey with the countries where the app's rate differs from the family's, which it is not. It also said the formal route is closed in Sudan, Lebanon, Iran and Russia, that crypto there is often cheaper, faster and safer, that your family in Istanbul most likely converts to dollars the same week, and that identity reviews run two days to three weeks; none of those could be sourced, so they are cut or softened.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a July 2026 order put all crypto activity in Nigeria under a new licensing regime, and that your legal position depended on your platform and how you report it. The order sets which regulator registers which kind of firm and creates no new regulator, so those claims are gone and the page now shows how to check a platform.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page called the Nigeria Friday number the current week's arithmetic. That issue has rates from 7 July, and no Nigeria issue has run since. The link now gives that date.
- 2026-08-01: An earlier version of this page carried three wrong numbers and one wrong platform roster on the YMYL surfaces the piece is meant to be careful with. The Venezuela paragraph said the central bank rate was around 590 bolivars to the dollar with USDT at 810 on Binance P2P and a gap of about 35 per cent; the BCV rate at end of July 2026 was 748.78 (source: bcv.today) and current P2P prints were around 840, which puts the real gap at about 12 to 15 per cent. The Nigeria paragraph named Bybit and Quidax as the local alternatives after Binance closed its naira services; Bybit is a Dubai-registered global exchange that was blocked by the NCC in the February 2024 telecom order alongside Binance and remains ISP-blocked in Nigeria, and Quidax discontinued its P2P trading feature in January 2026. The corrected copy names Busha (with an accurate description) and tells the reader to ask a recent Nigerian user which platform is currently accessible and settling, rather than sending them to a static roster that goes out of date between releases.