How do we collect this data?

We base our price comparisons on data we’ve taken from other providers’ websites, on specific dates.

Some providers don’t make their fees and exchange rates publicly available. In those cases, we use their service for bank-to-bank transfers - just as if we were customers - right until the point of paying. We do this multiple times, and we enter different amounts of money.

The comparison table shows how much it costs a customer to send money internationally, between the currencies specified, using each of the providers we’ve listed. It also shows the amount the recipient gets.

In case you want to know more, we’ve explained what all the different bits of our comparison table mean - and how we work them out.

1.The transfer fee

The ‘transfer fee’ is simply how much the provider says it costs to use their service online. We only compare costs for online transfers from bank to bank. Telephone banking, paying from a branch or paying for a transfer via credit card are usually more expensive.

2.The exchange rate

The ‘exchange rate’ represents the estimated exchange rate for each provider. It isn’t the exact exchange rate we saw on the day we used that provider’s service. It wouldn’t be fair to providers to show these collected rates - simply because we don’t collect all of our data at exactly the same time. Instead, we estimate what each provider’s exchange rate would be right now. Here’s how we work out that estimate.

First, we work out the markup on each provider’s exchange rate.

To do this, we record the exchange rate each provider is offering on their website. At the same time, we check the mid-market rate. Then, we calculate the difference between those two figures. For instance, if a provider’s rate was 1.4, and the mid-market rate was 1.6, we’d record a difference of 0.2 (12.5%). We call this difference the ‘markup’.

Then, we subtract each provider’s markup from the mid-market rate

When you see the comparison table - which might be on the same day for most providers, but could be later for others - we check the mid-market rate again. Then, we estimate each provider’s exchange rate by subtracting their markup we previously recorded, from the latest mid-market rate. Using our last example, if the mid-market rate has moved to 2.0 when you see the table, we’d show that particular provider’s exchange rate as 1.75. That’s because we recorded their markup as 12.5%.

3.How we work out a comparison for exact amounts that we haven’t collected

When we collect data from providers, we do it using different “amounts”. So, pretending we’re a customer again, we might go through the transfer process with £100, £500 and £2000. What that means, is that for some providers, the amount(s) we entered when we used their service might not be the same as the one you’ve just seen in the comparison table.

This is important, because providers tend to offer better exchange rates and smaller transfer fees when a customer is moving larger sums of money. So where we haven’t collected data on the exact amount shown in the comparison table - we make sure we’re fair to other providers, by looking at the nearest amounts that we’ve got data for (e.g. just greater or smaller than the amount in the table). And when you see the table, we’re showing the cheapest transfer fee and best exchange rate we’ve found from these nearest amounts.

What all this means for you

This means that the ‘transfer fee’ and ‘rate’ you see in the comparison table might be slightly different to the ones each provider currently has on their website. In fact, the comparison table might show a better transfer fee and a better exchange rate for all the providers.