How we review

Our reviews aim to give you the key information you need to evaluate a money transfer service.

We cannot recommend what you should do with important financial decisions. However, we can give a simple narrative around each provider, the kind of customers they cater to, and the specific features and attributes of their service.

Our scores are based on an internal methodology that weighs a number of factors, and is continually iterated to be more helpful.

How we test

We have hands-on experience with a whole host of money transfer services. This testing lets us speak with confidence about our individual experience with that service.

While this does provide some anecdotal value and reassurance to our readers, it is not a large-scale test. The true nature of a service's performance emerges across their whole customer base, with edge cases and specific scenarios. Every transfer is different.

So while we will continue to conduct our own tests, please be aware that there are inherent limitations in this process, and our experience won't reflect yours or anyone else's.

Our search results

Ordering

The search results here at SendAbroad.co.uk are ordered in a way that we hope is clear, helpful and transparent.

In any given section, we always order providers by cheapest first as default.

Cheapest is calculated by the highest 'amount received' for a specific send amount you search, or the lowest 'send amount' for a specific receive amount you search.

These figures are affected by exchange rates and transfer fees offered by the provider. It does not include any potential intermediary bank fees, which could increase the cost.

You have the option to change the ordering method to sort by score, if you prefer.

Sections

Our results are broken up into four main areas:

  • Ads - more on that below

  • Live market rates - these providers are given prominence in our results, as they have provided real-time access to their rates & fees.

  • More options - we include additional options that are not able to provide us automated rate information. The rates displayed here are indicative based on our team's research.

  • Options to avoid - we show estimates of some more costly options as a reminder that these options exist and should be carefully avoided.

Inclusion

We strive to give our users the most helpful set of results as possible.

The inclusion of providers in our live rates section is dependent on access to a suitable API and commercial/business prioritisation of integrating an API into our systems.

We have more flexibility in showing increasing numbers of providers in our 'more options' section. While this cannot be fully comprehensive, we make our best effort to show the widest range of options of any comparison site in the UK market.

Ads

Certain providers have increased visibility in our search results. These are displayed in blue boxes with a clear 'ad' disclosure label.

We only work with advertising partners who we believe provide an excellent service to our users. However, as you might expect, the providers appearing in ads are not always the cheapest or best providers for your specific needs.

Market analysis

Across the site, we display data and insights that are aggregated from our market analysis engine.

We automatically and regularly scan the market across tens of thousands of data points. This has helped us build a proprietary data source, understanding trends and patterns in costs, coverage and overall market dynamics across thousands of money transfer corridors.

This data, while some of the most comprehensive avaiable to any comparison site, is naturally limited by our own internal systems and the providers that appear in our search results.