What you should not do is open your own bank's app, the one you use for everyday banking. Barclays, NatWest, HSBC and Lloyds do not send straight to MoMo. They send to a Ghanaian bank account through the international bank system, so the money ends up in the wrong place: a bank account, when your family wants it in their MoMo wallet.
The e-levy and the cash-out fee
You may have heard that Ghana takes a slice of every mobile-money transfer. That was the e-levy, but it has been completely repealed. As of 4 November 2026, the state charges nothing on the mobile-money transfer itself.
There is a charge on your relative's side, not yours. When she goes to an MTN MoMo agent to take physical cash out of the wallet, MTN charges her a fee. On a normal-sized send, that fee is either 1 percent of the amount, or a flat 20 cedis, whichever the size falls in. If she takes out the whole of a £300 send in one visit, she pays the flat 20 cedis, about £1.30.
She avoids that charge by keeping the money on the wallet. She can pay a market seller, buy phone airtime or pay a school from the wallet, without paying the cash-out fee. If she needs physical notes, a single larger withdrawal costs less than two small ones (see below).
Why send straight to MoMo
MTN MoMo is the wallet on your family member's SIM. Receiving money into a MoMo wallet is free on the receiver's side. Pounds go in on your phone and cedis arrive on hers, in minutes.
The real exchange rate is the one Google shows you when you search what the pound is worth in cedis. On 4 November 2026 Wise gave it as 15.72 cedis to the pound, and it moves every day. At that rate £300 is about 4,715 cedis before any cost. Any app that gives you a rate much lower than the number Google shows is keeping the difference for itself.
The two other MoMo wallets in Ghana are Telecel Cash (the old Vodafone Cash, rebranded in early 2024, so if she still calls it Vodafone Cash she means the same wallet) and AirtelTigo Money. Wise and Remitly name both wallets on their own pages. Sendwave's UK to Ghana page lists AirtelTigo, MTN and Telecel. LemFi and WorldRemit name AirtelTigo and Vodafone, the old name for Telecel Cash. Check inside the app before you send.
What each app showed on 4 November 2026
These are the prices on £300 from the UK on 4 November 2026. They move every day, so put the same amount into two apps before you send.
Sendwave shows no fee. Its quoted rate was 15.65 cedis to the pound, so £300 delivered about 4,696 cedis.
WorldRemit's calculator showed no fee and the same 15.65 cedis to the pound to a MoMo wallet, so also about 4,696 cedis. That is the price it shows with no account, so check yours in the app. It pays into MTN MoMo, a Ghana bank, or a cash pickup point.
Wise uses the real exchange rate and charges a fee, which was about 1.5 to 2 percent on £200 to £300 to a Ghana bank account, paying by bank transfer. It pays into MTN, AirtelTigo, Telecel Cash, or a Ghana bank account.
Wise pays at most 2,800 cedis (about £180) into a wallet in one transfer. So £300 to a wallet is two transfers of £150, and each has its own fee. We could not get Wise's price into a wallet, so read it in the app. One £300 transfer to a Ghana bank account cost £4.43 and delivered about 4,646 cedis. On 5 November 2026 Wise said it could not guarantee its rate to cedis. So the amount that arrives can change, unless you pay from a Wise account. If you are new to sending money and want the app that shows its costs most clearly, use Wise.
Remitly gives new customers £10 off their first transfer of £50 or more. New customers also pay no fee on any transfer, unless they pay by credit card. Both offers run through 31 December 2026. Its calculator showed 15.34 cedis to the pound on £300, so she gets about 4,603 cedis, and with the £10 off you pay £290 for that first send. After that, compare Remitly's cedi figure with the other apps before each send.
LemFi charges no fee to Ghana. Its quoted rate was 15.65 cedis to the pound. Its Ghana page names AirtelTigo, Vodafone and "other mobile money services", not MTN. Check that the app shows MTN before you choose it for this wallet.
What to watch for
Fewer, larger withdrawals at the agent cost less. MTN's cash-out charge is either 1 percent of the amount taken (between 50 and 2,000 cedis) or a flat 20 cedis (above 2,000). If she takes 3,000 cedis out in one visit, the fee is 20 cedis. If she takes it in two 1,500-cedi visits, each is 15 cedis, so 30 total.
Physical notes take longer than the transfer. The moment the cedis arrive, she can see them in her wallet and spend them there on airtime and market bills. For notes she needs an agent, and most agents keep shop hours. So a transfer you send at 22:00 is in her wallet that night, but the notes are not available until roughly 07:00 the next morning, unless there is a MoMo-enabled ATM nearby.
Check the rate when an app quotes zero fee. A UK bank app may show zero fee on a transfer to Ghana. The cost is then in the rate the bank uses to change your pounds into cedis. To check, open the bank app and one of the MoMo apps side by side, put the same pound amount into both, and compare the cedi figure at the bottom.
Not every app names every wallet. LemFi's Ghana page does not name MTN. If your relative uses Telecel Cash or AirtelTigo Money, check inside the app first.
MTN limits how much a wallet can take in a day and how much it can hold, and the limits cover money sent or received. A Minimum wallet has a daily limit of 3,000 cedis and can hold 5,000, so £200 or £300 can be too much for it. A Medium wallet has a daily limit of 15,000 cedis and can hold 40,000. An Enhanced wallet has a daily limit of 25,000 cedis and can hold 75,000. These are 
MTN's limits on 4 November 2026.
Ask her which level her wallet is before you send. She can check her limits on her phone: dial *170#, choose 6 for My Wallet, # for next, then 8, and enter her PIN. She can upgrade from Minimum to Medium on her phone: dial *170#, choose 6 for My Wallet, then 7 to upgrade.
For bigger one-off sends
For school fees, a medical bill, or any single send above roughly £1,000, check the wallet limit before you choose MoMo. At the real rate on 4 November 2026, £1,000 was about 15,700 cedis. That is more than a Minimum or Medium wallet can take in one day, and more than a Minimum wallet can hold.
If the money does go to the wallet, ask her how she will take it out: agent visits, a MoMo-enabled ATM, or paying the school directly from the wallet where the school accepts it.
Where the money needs to end up in a bank account (GCB, Ecobank, Stanbic, Absa Ghana), Wise pays into Ghana bank accounts directly, usually within one working day. That is often the simplest way to move a school-fees-sized amount, because it arrives in a form the school will accept without extra steps.
What to open
For a routine £200 to £300 send to family MTN MoMoopen Sendwave and one other app, put in the same amount, and send through the one that shows more cedis. Above 2,800 cedis (about £180), Wise needs two transfers. If it is your first ever Remitly transfer, check it too, because the £10 off comes off what you pay.
For a send to Telecel CashWise, Sendwave or Remitly. All three name it on their own pages. Check inside the app first.
For a one-off larger than about £1,000, where the money needs to be in a bank account at the endWise to a Ghana bank account, in one working day.
If you were about to open your own bank's app for this transfer, compare it first. Some bank apps show no fee and some show one, and part of the cost can sit in the exchange rate, so go by the cedi figure.
Corrections
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said Sendwave's whole cost is in the exchange rate. Sendwave says it makes money from the exchange rate, which may include a small margin, and on the evening of 5 November its rate was above Wise's real rate, so the line is gone.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said no app delivers the amount the real rate gives on £300. That was true on 4 November, when the most any app delivered was about 4,696 cedis. On the evening of 5 November Sendwave, WorldRemit and LemFi each showed more than that amount, so the line is gone.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said LemFi's cost on sends to Ghana is in the exchange rate. LemFi's terms say it makes money from fees on some routes and when it changes money, but we found no LemFi page that says how it earns on sends to Ghana, so the line is gone.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said new customers pay no fee on any Remitly transfer and named no way of paying. On 5 November 2026 Remitly's terms said the no-fee offer did not cover a credit card, so the page now says so.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said the amount Wise shows you before you press send is the amount that arrives. On 5 November Wise said it could not guarantee its rate to cedis, and that you need to pay from a Wise account if you want an exact amount to arrive, so the page now says that.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page gave £5.88 and about 4,623 cedis as the price of £300 to a wallet through Wise, and said Wise cost less to a bank account than to a wallet. Those were Wise's prices to a bank account, so the wallet figures and that comparison are gone, and its fee is now labelled as a bank price.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said to ignore any app that quotes zero fee and hides the rate, and that a UK bank app may not show you the exchange rate. Sendwave and other apps on this page quote zero fee, and NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds say they show the rate before you confirm, so both lines are gone.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page had the title "The cheapest way to send money from the UK to Ghana is straight to MTN MoMo". On 4 November WorldRemit quoted the same price to a Ghana bank account as to a wallet, so the title no longer says cheapest.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said LemFi pays into MTN wallets, listed it first among the apps, and picked it with Wise for a routine send. LemFi's own pages do not name MTN today, so it is out of the MTN picks and the page says to check the app first.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said any of the five apps puts close to 4,760 cedis in a wallet on £300 for a few pounds at most, gave August's real rate as 15.6 to 15.9, and called that rate today's. 4,760 was the amount at the real rate on 9 August before any cost, and that range held for only part of August, so the page now gives what each app showed on 4 November.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page did not say that Wise pays at most 2,800 cedis into a wallet in one transfer, so £300 on Wise needs two transfers. The limit and the two fees are now on the page.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Wise's fee is roughly 0.5 to 1.5 percent and that LemFi and Wise come within a pound of each other. On 4 November Wise's fee to a Ghana bank account was about 1.5 to 2 percent on £200 to £300, and the gap on £300 was more than a pound, so the page now gives dated figures.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Sendwave's rate is about 1 to 3 percent off the real rate and that it costs a pound or two more than LemFi and Wise. On 4 November, on £300, Sendwave delivered more to a wallet than Wise did to a Ghana bank account, so the page now gives its dated rate.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said most of the apps pay into AirtelTigo, that Sendwave pays into MTN MoMo and AirtelTigo Money, and that Wise was the most likely to pay Telecel Cash. Sendwave's UK to Ghana page data lists AirtelTigo, MTN and Telecel, and Remitly names Telecel Cash too, so Wise is not the only app that names it. The page now says what each app's own page names.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said MTN's wallet limits are not a problem for a few hundred pounds and that MoMo is fine above £1,000. £200 can be over the 3,000-cedi daily limit of a Minimum wallet, and £1,000 is over the Minimum and Medium daily limits, so the limits and how to upgrade are now on the page.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said WorldRemit charges £2 to £3, gives a rate 1 to 2.5 percent off the real rate, and sits in the middle of the five apps. Those figures came from comparison sites, so the page now gives the price WorldRemit's own calculator showed on 4 November.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said Remitly's first send is often the cheapest of the five, can put it slightly ahead of LemFi and Wise, and that Remitly has a cheaper, slower option to a bank account. We have no source for these, so the page now gives Remitly's dated quote and the £10 off.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said UK bank apps are slower and more expensive and that their transfers look free on the screen, said the apps all give close to the real rate, called the cash-out charge the one fee left, and listed sending money on to another wallet with the ways to avoid it. We have no source for these, and some banks show a fee, so the lines are gone and the page says to compare the cedi figure.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said a transfer sent from London at 22:00 is in the wallet at 22:00 Ghana time. That is only true in UK winter, because Ghana is an hour behind the UK in summer. The line no longer compares the two clocks.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version of this page said most Ghanaian families move their day-to-day money on MoMo, that nearly every Ghanaian family uses MTN MoMo, and that LemFi is the default for a lot of the UK Ghanaian community. We have no primary source that counts any of these, so all three lines are gone. No fee, figure or recommendation on this page changed because of this.
- 2026-08-09: An earlier version of the "What to open" section still referred to Remitly's "promotional rate on the first 500 pounds" after the main Remitly paragraph had already been rewritten. That second mention was a leftover from the same old offer and has now been rewritten to point at the current £10 off plus no fee.
- 2026-08-09: An earlier version of this page said Remitly gives new customers an enhanced exchange rate on the first £500 sent, running through 31 December 2026. Remitly's current UK to Ghana offer is a £10 discount on the first transfer of £50 or more, plus no fee on any transfer, running through 31 December 2026. The Remitly paragraph has been rewritten to match.