Rates checked 7 Jul 2026
If you are sending 200 pounds home to Kenya and it is going to a family M-Pesa wallet, the cheapest way to send it is one of these five apps: Wise, Sendwave, WorldRemit, Remitly or Revolut. Any of them lands close to 34,000 shillings in your mother’s wallet in seconds, for a total cost of about one to three pounds.
What you should not do is open your own high-street bank app. Barclays, NatWest and Santander will show no fee on the transfer screen. HSBC will show a five pound fee, and Lloyds will show nine pounds fifty. None of those is the whole price, because the rest is hidden in the exchange rate. On 200 pounds that hidden bit is another five to seven pounds, depending on the bank. That makes Lloyds the worst on this route: nine pounds fifty plus about seven in the rate is close to seventeen pounds gone, on a send that costs one to two pounds through Wise.
Why sending straight to M-Pesa is cheaper
M-Pesa is not a bank account. It is a wallet on your recipient’s Safaricom phone line, and nearly every Kenyan family has one. When the international side of M-Pesa was set up, Safaricom’s rule was simple: the person receiving on M-Pesa pays nothing to receive. All of the cost sits with the sender.
The good apps have built around that. Wise, Sendwave, WorldRemit, Remitly and Revolut all turn pounds into shillings and land them straight into an M-Pesa wallet, at close to the real exchange rate, in seconds. The real exchange rate is the one Google shows you when you search what the pound is worth in shillings.
The dearer route is your own bank sending on the international bank system to Equity or KCB, or Western Union pushing you toward a cash agent. Both are slower, and for a routine send home, they are the wrong tool.
The apps that use the real exchange rate
Wise. On 200 pounds the fee is about one to two pounds, at the real exchange rate, and the money lands in seconds. Wise’s own M-Pesa payout is limited to 150,000 shillings per transfer, about 870 pounds. If you are sending more than that in one go, you will need to split the transfer, or send to a Kenyan bank account instead.
Sendwave. No visible fee. The whole cost is inside the exchange rate, about 1.5 percent off the real rate, or about three pounds on 200 pounds. It is a simple app made for exactly this send. Some senders have had their account frozen while sending an ordinary amount and needed to call to unfreeze it. It is uncommon.
WorldRemit. M-Pesa in under two minutes, and new customers get a promotional exchange rate on the first transfer. The fee shape is not shown up front, so type the amount in to see the total before you send.
Remitly. No fee to Kenya M-Pesa. New customers get an enhanced rate of about 170 shillings per pound on the first 600 pounds. After that first transfer, the rate settles back, and it is worth checking against the others.
Revolut. Added direct M-Pesa payout in January 2024. Revolut charges a small transfer fee to Kenya on top of the exchange rate: 0.75 percent of the amount, minimum one pound, so on 200 pounds that is one pound fifty. On the free plan you also get 1,000 pounds of currency conversion per month at close to the real rate; above that Revolut adds another 1 percent. Revolut also widens the rate on shillings by another 1 percent between late Friday evening and late Sunday evening UK time, so if you can, avoid sending during that window.
What to watch for
The M-Pesa ceiling. A single M-Pesa transaction cannot be more than 250,000 shillings, about 1,450 pounds. A wallet cannot hold more than 500,000 shillings, about 2,900 pounds at once. If you are sending school fees, a hospital bill, or a family harambee, and the number is bigger than that, you either split the send across days or send to a Kenyan bank account instead.
Money on M-Pesa is not cash. Your mother sees the shillings in her wallet the moment they arrive, but she cannot walk to an M-Pesa agent and take out physical cash until the agent opens. Most agents keep shop hours. So if you send from London at 22:30, it is 01:30 in Nairobi, and the money is real, but it is locked away until roughly 07:00 unless there is an Equity, KCB or Co-op Bank ATM nearby that supports M-Pesa withdrawal. Those ATMs work at any hour, and cost a little more per withdrawal.
The withdrawal charge on her side. Safaricom charges a small fee when the recipient takes physical cash out at an agent. On a send of 20,000 to 35,000 shillings, roughly what 200 pounds becomes, that charge is 197 shillings, about 1.15 pounds. Not big, but tell her so she is not surprised when the wallet reads less after she withdraws.
“Free” that is not free. If your high-street bank app quotes zero fee on an international transfer but does not show you the exchange rate it is using, the fee is honest and the rate is where the cost lives. To check, open the bank app and one of the M-Pesa apps side by side, enter the same amount on the same day, and compare how many shillings land at the other end. That is the only number that matters.
For bigger one-off sends
For school fees, a medical bill, or any single send over about 1,450 pounds, M-Pesa on its own cannot carry the whole amount in one go. There are two options.
The first is to split the send across two days, staying under the 250,000 shilling per-transaction limit each time. Cheapest, but it takes more taps.
The second is to send to a Kenyan bank account (Equity, KCB or Co-op). Wise, WorldRemit and Remitly all support this at a similar cost per pound. It arrives same day or next. Do not send from your own high-street bank on the international bank system: the fee will look free or small, and the exchange rate will not be.
What to open
For a routine send to family M-Pesa on a weekday: Wise, Sendwave, WorldRemit or Remitly. Wise, WorldRemit and Remitly are all within a pound or so of each other on 200 pounds; Sendwave is a pound or two above them because the whole cost is in the exchange rate.
Sunday evening after 11pm UK time, and you use Revolut: wait until Monday morning, or open one of the others tonight.
For a one-off bigger than 1,450 pounds: either split it across two days to stay inside the M-Pesa limit, or send to a Kenyan bank account through Wise, WorldRemit or Remitly.
If you were about to open your high-street bank app, don’t. On 200 pounds you lose five to seven pounds inside the exchange rate on top of any transfer fee. On Lloyds that adds up to nearly seventeen pounds gone.