India’s record remittance year and the real cost of sending money home

Russell Gous spends his working days comparing what it costs to move money out of Australia, and even by his standards the India numbers stood out. “Private remittances are not only an act of love and duty but also a significant driver of economic activity in recipient countries,” the editor-in-chief of comparison service Money Transfer Australia said in mid 2025, publishing analysis of World Bank, KNOMAD and Australian Bureau of Statistics data that put transfers from Australia to India at about US$7.3 billion in 2024, roughly double the flow of five years earlier. Those billions are built from small, regular acts. Survey and industry data point to the same destinations again and again: living costs, medical care and education for family back home.

A record year, measured two ways

India’s remittance story runs on two rulers, and it pays to know which one a headline is using. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) counts by financial year, April to March, from balance of payments data. The World Bank publishes calendar-year estimates. They rarely match, and neither is wrong.

On the RBI ruler, 2024-25 set the benchmark with gross personal transfer receipts of US$135.46 billion, a record, up about 14 per cent on the year before. In April 2026, SBI Research projected the just-finished 2025-26 year would beat it with US$137 to 140 billion, which is the figure behind the “about US$140 billion” now circulating. The RBI’s preliminary balance of payments release of 8 June 2026 points the same way: personal transfer receipts reached US$43.5 billion in the March quarter alone, up from US$33.9 billion a year earlier, helping push India’s current account into a US$7.1 billion surplus. Reporting of the same RBI data shows the family-maintenance component, workers’ remittances in the strict sense, jumped 26 per cent to US$110.47 billion for the full year.

The World Bank’s calendar-year estimate for 2024 put India at US$129 billion, the largest recipient in the world by a wide margin, ahead of Mexico (US$68 billion) and China (US$48 billion). India’s Economic Survey 2025-26 repeated the point in January 2026: India remains the world’s largest recipient.

Where Australia sits

The RBI’s Sixth Remittances Survey, published in its March 2025 Bulletin and covering 2023-24, recorded a structural shift. Advanced economies now supply more of India’s remittances than the Gulf. The United States led with 27.7 per cent, ahead of the UAE (19.2 per cent) and the United Kingdom (10.8 per cent), while the five leading advanced-economy sources, the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Singapore, together accounted for 51.2 per cent. Australia’s individual share was about 2.3 per cent, placing it among the top ten source countries and rising as Indian migration here skews towards higher-skilled work.

At the RBI’s post-policy press conference on 8 April 2026, Deputy Governor Poonam Gupta argued that this diversity protects the flows. “We are not anticipating a decline, especially if the crisis is going to be resolved very soon. We anticipate the demand for migrant workers will in fact increase from this region, which will help the remittances further,” she said of West Asia, noting Indian migrants now span low, medium and high-skilled work across many countries. The commitment on the Australian end is measurable too. A Western Union-commissioned survey reported by SBS found migrants in Australia sent home an average of 11 per cent of their annual income, and 92 per cent had sent money in the previous year.

What sending money actually costs

The World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide database, the primary global source on transfer costs, tracks the Australia-to-India corridor. Its latest published quarter, the third quarter of 2025 (surveyed 15 August to 10 September 2025), puts the corridor’s average total cost, meaning fees plus the exchange-rate margin, at 6.15 per cent. The database measures costs on transfers of A$200 and A$500, and fixed fees make the percentage smaller on larger transfers. Applied to A$1,000 as a rough illustration, that average would be about A$61, which overstates what a larger transfer usually costs.

The spread behind the average is where your money is. In that quarter’s tables, digital money transfer operators were the cheapest channel: Orbit Remit at 0.54 per cent, InstaReM at 0.58 per cent, Wise at 1.08 per cent and Remitly at 1.95 per cent, which applied to A$1,000 as an illustration is roughly A$5 to A$20. Banks dominated the dear end: ANZ at 8.19 to 8.42 per cent, Bank of Baroda at 13.56 to 13.62 per cent, Bendigo Bank at 19.34 to 20.27 per cent and Commonwealth Bank at 20.11 per cent, or, on the same illustration, from about A$82 to just over A$200. Even the cheapest bank listed, State Bank of India at 2.24 per cent, cost about four times the cheapest digital operator. The pattern matches the World Bank’s global data, which has long shown banks as the dearest channel (12.1 per cent on average in mid 2023) and digital and mobile providers the cheapest.

All of it sits above UN Sustainable Development Goal target 10.c, which commits governments to cut remittance costs below 3 per cent by 2030 and eliminate corridors costing more than 5 per cent. Globally, the average cost of sending US$200 was still 6.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2025, per a UN DESA briefing. India fares better than most; coverage of the RBI survey put the average cost of sending US$200 to India at 4.9 per cent against a 6.65 per cent global average, still well short of the target.

The industry sees that gap as its opening. “India is a huge market for remittance,” Wise’s Asia-Pacific head of expansion Shrawan Saraogi told Bloomberg in 2024, in an interview republished by Business Standard, promising “a product that will be fast, that will be cheap, that will be transparent.” Remitly founder Matt Oppenheimer, chief executive until February 2026 and now chairman, made speed his measure in a May 2025 PYMNTS interview: “I’m proud of the fact that 93% of customers complete a transaction in less than an hour.”

Timing and the rupee

Fees are only half the sum; the exchange rate is the other half. Through August 2026 the Australian dollar bought roughly 67 to 69 rupees, according to rate histories published by Wise, OFX and MTFX, with Wise listing A$1 at 68.57 rupees on 24 August. The recent run has favoured senders. OFX’s monthly averages climbed from about 61.6 rupees in January 2026 to the high 60s by August, and Wise’s six-month range stretches from a low near 63.9 in early April to a high near 69.4 in mid May. On A$1,000, the difference between 64 and 69 rupees is 5,000 rupees at the receiving end, which is why the rate you transact at can matter as much as the fee you are charged.

Keeping it safe

The safety numbers deserve the same attention as the price ones. Australians reported A$173.8 million lost to scams in the first half of 2025, up 26 per cent year on year, and losses among people who speak English as a second language rose 44 per cent, the ACCC’s National Anti-Scam Centre said in August 2025. “Technology is helping scammers reach more people than ever before and we see scams becoming more sophisticated,” ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said, urging the agency’s “Stop. Check. Protect.” habit. ASIC’s Moneysmart guidance is blunt about transfers in particular: “If you send money to someone and that person turns out to be a scammer, it’s almost impossible to get your money back.” Its baseline check is simple: “In Australia, money transfer services must be registered with AUSTRAC,” and the register can be searched before you send a cent.

Paying less, according to the data

Sticking strictly to what the sourced numbers support:

• Compare the total cost, not the advertised fee. Moneysmart notes providers “choose the exchange rate they use” and “also charge fees”; Remittance Prices Worldwide ranks providers on both combined.
• Check the corridor table before you send. Moneysmart itself points Australians to Remittance Prices Worldwide and SaverAsia as independent comparison tools.
• Mind the channel gap. In the latest corridor data, the distance between a sub-1 per cent digital operator and a 20 per cent bank transfer, applied to A$1,000 as an illustration, is close to A$200.
• Confirm AUSTRAC registration and check Scamwatch before trying any new provider.
• Watch the rate window. A roughly five-rupee swing over six months, visible across all three rate histories above, moves thousands of rupees on a single A$1,000 transfer.

This article is general information only, not financial advice; check the current numbers yourself before you send.

Why the last percentage point matters

Put the two record numbers side by side. India’s net private transfers reached a record US$144.8 billion in 2025-26 on the financial-year measure, and Australians paid an average of 6.15 per cent, more than double the UN target, to move their share of it. On the US$7.3 billion Australia-to-India flow alone, each percentage point of cost is roughly US$73 million a year that either stays with intermediaries or reaches families, depending on choices made at a laptop on a Saturday morning. The target is within reach here; the corridor’s cheapest published providers already beat 3 per cent several times over, while the dearest miss it by a factor of more than six. Gupta expects the flows to keep growing. Gous calls them “an act of love and duty”. The data simply asks that less of the love be lost in transit.