Abstract

Reducing cost of sending remittances is a sustainable development goal, and the World Bank is coordinating an effort to reduce remittance costs. Remittances remained resilient during the financial crisis overall and have since risen. The cost of sending remittances from the United Kingdom, a major remittances source country, to a selected group of 10 developing countries finds uneven trends in the cost of sending small sums over borders, suggesting the need for more targeted and coordinated policies towards decreasing the remittance prices. In these corridors, major money transfer operators seemingly have trailed small operators in reducing the costs.