Checked Friday morning, 31 July: 300 pounds from the UK to a Pakistan bank account, sent through seven apps. Between the sharpest regular price this week and the worst named one, the gap came to 4,463.60 rupees. That is about £11.94.
This is the last Friday of July, and it is a month since Pakistan quietly wound up the scheme that had been paying banks to make these transfers feel free. The number below is worth writing down: it is what UK-to-Pakistan looked like one month into the new regime.
Here is what each one delivered.
| App | £300 arrives as | Visible fee | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moneygram | PKR 112,164.09 | £0 | The highest number this week. Sample is Thursday afternoon’s price in the Wise price comparison, so treat it as yesterday’s snapshot, not this morning’s. |
| Remitly (regular) | PKR 112,105.80 | £0 | The sharpest fresh price this morning. No visible fee, and the rate is right at the real market rate. About 58 rupees behind Moneygram, or under 20 pence. |
| Instarem | PKR 111,301.56 | £0 | No visible fee. The exchange rate takes about 0.75 percent, roughly £2.23 on 300 pounds. |
| Wise | PKR 111,177.42 | £2.56 | The safe default. Real market rate, visible fee, arrives in seconds. About 928 rupees behind Remitly, or £2.48. |
| Skrill | PKR 110,463.63 | £0 | No visible fee. The exchange rate takes about 1.5 percent, roughly £4.47 on 300 pounds. |
| Xoom (PayPal) | PKR 109,552.86 | £0 | No visible fee. The exchange rate takes about 2.3 percent, roughly £6.91 on 300 pounds. |
| OFX | PKR 107,642.20 | £7.00 | The least money arrived. A £7 upfront fee, plus about 1.75 percent in the rate on top. Around £12 gone in all. |
| Remitly (first send only) | PKR 112,728.00 | £0 | Promotional rate of 375.76 rupees to the pound. Only on your first transfer with Remitly. |
Rates checked Friday 31 July 2026, morning UK time. Wise’s number is from Wise’s live rate feed at around 5am UK time, alongside its own price comparison. Remitly, Instarem, Skrill and OFX are from that same comparison, all sampled between 04:22 and 04:40 UK time this morning. Wise’s own row in the comparison was sampled at 05:05 UK time. Xoom’s sample is from 01:18 UK time. Moneygram’s number was last sampled by that comparison on Thursday 30 July at 14:13 UK time, so treat it as a Thursday snapshot, not this morning’s. Remitly’s promotional first-transfer rate is taken directly from the Remitly UK site this morning.
To sanity-check the exchange rate, we cross-referenced open.er-api.com, an independent source: it puts the rate at 372.65 rupees to the pound, within 0.3 percent of Wise’s live rate. The rate matches.
Western Union and WorldRemit do not have a fresh sample in the comparison today. Their last sampled prices are from Tuesday 28 July, three days old, so they are not in the table this week. LemFi, Taptap Send and Sendwave do not show a price on this route in the comparison today, so they are not in the table either.
What to actually open
If you are a new Remitly customer, take the first-transfer rate. On 300 pounds this morning it would deliver 112,728 rupees, which is 622 rupees more than Remitly’s regular rate and about 1,551 rupees more than Wise. That is about £4.15 you keep by sending on the first-transfer rate rather than at Wise’s rate. The offer is one send only, so use it on a send you were going to make anyway.
If you already send with Remitly, or you set up a new account and get past the first send, Remitly’s regular rate this morning was the sharpest of the fresh named prices: 112,105.80 rupees on 300 pounds, no visible fee, right at the real market rate. That is 928 rupees more than Wise on 300 pounds, or about £2.48.
If you want the safest, best-known option and you do not want to open a new app, use Wise. On 300 pounds this week Wise gave 928 rupees less than Remitly’s regular rate, which is about £2.48. The fee is on the screen, the exchange rate is the real market rate, and the money lands in seconds. For a lot of senders that plainness is worth the £2.48.
Do not open Xoom for this send unless there is no other option. There is no visible fee, but the rate takes about 2.3 percent quietly. On 300 pounds this morning Xoom gave 2,553 rupees less than Remitly’s regular rate. That is about £6.83 you lose without seeing it come off the screen.
OFX gave the least money on 300 pounds this week. A £7 upfront fee on a 300-pound send is a big proportion, and there is more taken in the rate on top. If you have a bigger transfer to make, look at OFX again on that day; on a 300-pound send it is not the number to open.
Moneygram’s Thursday snapshot is the highest number in the table, but it is a day old and Remitly’s regular rate is fresh and inside 60 rupees of it. If you already send with Moneygram, keep sending; if you are opening an app for this transfer, Remitly is the sharper pick on today’s numbers.
What the numbers say about the scheme ending
Until 1 July, Pakistan’s State Bank was paying the receiving bank a small fee, worth roughly four pounds, every time a UK sender put at least 200 US dollars into a Pakistan bank account. That is why apps like Wise, Remitly and Xoom could keep the visible fee at zero and the rate near the real market rate when sending money from the UK to Pakistan for years. The International Monetary Fund pushed Pakistan to end the arrangement, and it stopped on 1 July.
Read the table with that in mind. One month in, the biggest names on this route, Wise and Remitly and Instarem and Moneygram, are still delivering right at or near the real market rate on 300 pounds, with either no visible fee or a small one you can see. The bank at the far end is, for now, absorbing the loss of that four pounds itself.
That may not last. If a “0.00” fee turns into 1.99 or 2.99 on your usual app in September, that is the invoice landing on you. If the fee stays zero but the rate quietly drops one percent below Google’s, that is the same invoice, hidden in a different place. Screenshot today’s number on your usual app, and check it again in September.
For the fuller story on the scheme and what to watch for, see how to send money to Pakistan.
One thing the table cannot show
The table is for a bank-deposit send. In Pakistan you can also have the money land in an Easypaisa or JazzCash mobile wallet, or picked up in cash at a shop. Most UK-based apps let you choose which one inside the app when you send.
For most households, bank deposit is the plain answer: no cash-pickup queue, no extra step in the app, and the recipient can move the money on from their bank as usual. Wallet delivery is handy when the recipient does not have a bank account or wants the money spendable straight from the phone; some apps quote a slightly different rate for wallet delivery, so check the number inside the app before you send. Cash pickup is the slowest and the fussiest, and the least worth choosing unless the recipient specifically asks for it.
Next Friday: another country, another number.