The same $200 sent to India can cost $40 or less than nothing, and the World Bank has the receipts

Four times a year the World Bank surveys the remittance market and records what it costs to move money along the corridors it tracks. Australia to India is one of them, and anyone who needs to send money to India from Australia can read the results. The latest corridor figures published when this article was written were for the third quarter of 2025, with prices collected between 15 August and 10 September 2025, and they put the average total cost of sending 200 Australian dollars to India at 6.15 per cent, or $12.30.

Averages hide the point. The cheapest option in the same survey cost less than nothing. The dearest cost $40.54.

How the World Bank counts

The Remittance Prices Worldwide database surveys two amounts for each corridor, the local equivalent of 200 US dollars and of 500, and records for each provider the transaction fee and the margin between the exchange rate applied and a reference rate. Total cost is the fee plus that margin, expressed as a percentage of the amount sent.

It is the margin that people miss. A transfer advertised as fee-free can still cost several per cent if the rupees arrive at a rate a few paise below the market, and the World Bank’s table for this corridor shows exactly that. Two WorldRemit internet products are recorded with no fee and a 0.65 per cent margin, a total cost of 0.65 per cent, while InstaReM is recorded with a $1.14 fee and a 0.01 per cent margin, a total of 0.58 per cent. The one with the fee was cheaper.

The table, top to bottom

At the top, WorldRemit sending to a bank account over the internet is recorded with no fee and an exchange rate better than the World Bank’s reference rate, giving a total cost of minus 2.22 per cent. Orbit Remit is recorded at 0.54 per cent, InstaReM at 0.58, Aussie Forex & Finance at 1.03, Wise at 1.08, ACE Money Transfer at 1.41, Western Union online at 1.61, Rocket Remit at 1.65, MoneyGram online at 1.86 and Remitly at 1.95. Every one of those is a specialist transfer service used over the internet.

Below them sit about 30 more services, most of them also online. The State Bank of India’s internet service is recorded at 2.24 per cent, Citibank at 2.76, HDFC Bank at 3.82, the Commonwealth Bank’s internet service at 5.40, ANZ’s at 8.19 and Bank of Baroda’s at 13.60. The bottom of the table belongs to the banks whichever door is used: Bendigo Bank’s internet service at 19.34 per cent, the Commonwealth Bank at a branch at 20.11, and Bendigo Bank at a branch at 20.27 per cent, or $40.54 on a $200 transfer.

The channel matters less than the name on the door. The Commonwealth Bank charged nearly four times as much at the branch as online; Bendigo charged nearly the same either way; Bank of Baroda’s branch was fractionally cheaper than its website. What separates the top of the table from the bottom is the kind of business doing the transfer.

A negative cost is a snapshot, not a promise, and a provider that beat the reference rate in August may not have done so since. The useful reading of the table is the spread. Between the cheapest service and the dearest, the difference in the survey period was about $45 on a $200 transfer.

What the UN target measures

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals set a target for this. Target 10.c, in the UN’s metadata document for the indicator, updated 27 March 2026, reads: “By 2030, reduce to less than 3 per cent the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent.”

The way the UN measures the second half of that matters here. A corridor is judged on the average of its three cheapest qualifying services, a measure the World Bank calls the Smart Remitter Target, and the qualifying services must be transparent about fees and margins, land within five days and be accessible to the sender. The three cheapest services in the table average below zero, and the next several sit under 2 per cent, so on that measure Australia to India is nowhere near the 5 per cent line. The 6.15 per cent is a different number. It is the simple average across everything on offer, which is closer to what a sender pays who picks without comparing.

Why the bank still gets used

The World Bank table does not record why people choose what they choose, and this article will not guess at it. What it does record is who charges what, and that every one of the six dearest services in the survey belonged to a bank.

There are things a bank does that a transfer app does not. It already holds the sender’s money and identity. It handles a customer who does not want a foreign exchange app holding their details. It handles a first transfer where the sender wants a person to confirm the account number before the money leaves. None of that is unreasonable. What the survey establishes is what those things cost in this corridor at the moment of the survey, and it is a price a family should choose to pay knowingly rather than by default.

How to send money to India from Australia using the table

Three practical readings. First, price the whole transfer rather than the fee. Take the amount you are sending, look at the rupees your family will actually receive, and compare that figure across providers on the same day. Second, the World Bank’s corridor page is public, the data behind it is collected every quarter and released twice a year, and a household that sends money every month can check it when it updates. Third, do the arithmetic once. A difference of 5 per cent on a monthly transfer of $1,000 is $600 a year.

The World Bank’s methodology also records the speed of each service, which the figures above leave out. A transfer that lands the same day and one that lands in three days are different products even at the same price, and a family sending money for a hospital bill will price speed differently from one topping up a parent’s savings account. The table gives the cost of each; the sender supplies the reason.

The larger point

Remittances from this community are wages, sent to the people wages are for. The Australian end of that transaction has, on the World Bank’s numbers, some very cheap services sitting beside some very expensive ones, and which of them a family pays for is decided at the point of sending, by the sender. That is unusual among the costs of migration. Most of them are set by someone else.