The Fastest Ways to Send Money Abroad From the UK

One of the fastest ways you can transfer money is through Wise.

Based on our remittance data and research, 74% of transfers land in under 20 seconds, and 95% within 24 hours.

The best part, Wise tells you exactly how long the transfer will take before you even sign up. In my opinion, every company should follow this and display transfer times upfront.

For example, sending £2000 to EUR will take Minutes.

In comparison, the same transfer with HSBC or Lloyds will take 3-5 working days.

The speed comes from the local accounts I explained above. The main delay comes from the moment you fund the transfer till it reaches Wise’s account.

To keep it fast, fund the transfer by Open Banking, debit card, or Apple Pay/Google Pay rather than with a manual bank transfer, so your money reaches Wise instantly.

In the 6 years that I’ve had Wise, I don’t think it ever delayed my deposits or transfer abroad. But I usually use their multi-currency account for transfers.

The only time it’s not the fastest is when it comes to large transfers (think £50k+).

For this you will need to use bank transfer to send money to Wise. This can cause delays, but from your bank rather than Wise.

If you live abroad, Revolut is the fastest money transfer app for sending money home, or having family send it to you.

The reason is Revolut-to-Revolut transfers (also known as P2P transfer).

If both people are on Revolut, the money moves inside their system instantly and for cheap.

This makes it especially good for expats in the UK sending money home, and UK expats or students abroad receiving it.

And yes, Wise also has this feature, the difference is availability.

Revolut is available in a lot of countries, so wherever you are, there's a good chance you can open an account (worth checking availability for your specific country first).

I send money to my grandma in Lithuania, my dad sends me money from there, and my wife sends it to her sister in Latvia.

I personally use it more than Wise, but purely because my family and friends have Revolut accounts.

Check out my Wise vs Revolut comparison for more details.

On the downside, the availability still depends on where you live and where you’re sending money to.

And if you’re making an international transfer to a non-Revolut account, it’s still fast and cheap, but not always.

I've also had my transfer frozen for over a week for AML checks before, so there are quirks with it.

But from our users, this also happens to Wise too (you can find our user feedback on Wise here).

Unlike most money transfer apps, Revolut is now a licensed bank, so balances are FSCS-protected up to £120,000.

That doesn't affect speed, but it's reassuring if money sits in your account between transfers.

When the recipient needs physical cash in hand, MoneyGram is the fastest and best option.

Cash pickup is almost always instant and widely available compared to P2P transfers (above).

You schedule the cash pickup with MoneyGram, pay for your transfer online or in store, and money will be available within minutes.

The downside is that the pickup location needs to have this amount of money ready for collection.

In the past, this was a common problem. My dad would send me £1,000 and I couldn’t find a shop that had enough cash on hand to collect.

But today, this is rarely a problem.

To collect, the recipient will need to have their ID and their name must match exactly how it’s written on the receipt.

The reason we suggest MoneyGram and not Western Union, is because of the cost and the offers.

Both have more or less equal coverage, but MoneyGram has great offers on first time transfers. This makes it much cheaper compared to Western Union or Ria Money.

Based on our comparisons, TapTap Send is the fastest and cheapest option for South Asia and Africa.

TapTap confirmed that 95% of transfers arrived within three minutes, and around 78% in under a minute.

On the big corridors like India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana, it's consistently fast. I made a few small test transfers myself and all arrived within minutes.

But, the reason I think it’s this good, is because of their mobile wallets and mobile money coverage.

TapTap Send can deliver money straight to most popular mobile wallets like MTN, Orange Money, bKash, and JazzCash.

Mobile wallets are almost always instant, but mobile wallets are not common outside Asia and Africa.

The recipient gets an SMS and the funds are there, no bank account needed.

Funding the transfer can affect how quickly your money reaches TapTap Send, and to speed it up pay by instant bank transfer (Open Banking), by debit card, or via Apple Pay/Google Pay.

The speed does drop off on less common routes and larger amounts, where transfers can sit "in progress" for hours, and support is slow to chase.

But for regular ones to the main Asia and Africa corridors it’s very fast.

Just to be sure, run a live search based on the destination to see who offers the fastest mobile wallet deposit.

For large transfers, £50,000 and up, "fastest" stops being about delivery speed and starts being about getting it set up, having everything prepped, and cleared without any hold-ups.

Based on our analysis, RegencyFX consistently offers a smooth experience at a decent exchange rate.

To be honest, Regency and TorFX are equally good at this in my opinion. The difference is mainly about the destination coverage (RegencyFX covers more).

But the downside is that currency brokers are generally slower when it comes to “raw” speed, but again, this should not matter here.

When you're moving that much, the bottleneck is rarely the transfer itself, it’s more about the checks on the way. For example, your bank can flag the transfer, there can be AML checks, compliance issues, etc.

RegencyFX account managers will advise you on how to avoid these issues and how to speed things up.

They will handle all the prep, lock in agreed rates, and guide you through the process. You will not get this with the app based providers.

One thing you can do to speed up the transfer process is contact your bank in advance and notify them about the transfer, so they are aware.

If you're sending to a less common currency, Xe is usually your fastest reliable option, simply because it reaches places most other apps don't.

Xe covers over 190 destinations and 100+ currencies, one of the widest networks in the industry, especially for an app / online based money transfer company.

Which in practice means they are the fastest for the destinations no one else covers (other than the brokers).

But even then, we’ve analysed all their corridors and on average, they are just as fast as other options if not faster.

Over 90% of Xe transfers complete within 24 hours, and card-funded transfers are quicker than bank transfers.

The downside is the cost, it’s usually a bit more expensive so it makes sense to use for medium sized amounts.

If you're paying someone in the UK, a traditional bank transfer is about as instant as it gets.

I think Monzo is great for this, but in reality any UK bank is fast for transfers within the UK.

Monzo runs on Faster Payments, so money to another UK account lands in seconds, any time of day, including weekends, with none of the cutoff times that slow down some older banks.

Monzo-to-Monzo payments are instant too, and you get a real-time notification the moment money is sent.

When it comes to business, it’s more about making multiple payments fast and cheap.

From our analysis and comparisons, Airwallex is one of the fastest options for this.

The speed comes from the local accounts.

Airwallex gives you 12 of them across the US, UK, Europe, Asia and more, so paying a supplier or contractor abroad is a local transfer at their end, not a slow SWIFT.

Local-account transfers usually arrive the same day. You can also run batch payments to up to 1,000 recipients at once, so payroll or a run of supplier payments goes out in one go rather than one by one, making it much faster.

However, transfers to countries with weaker banking infrastructure (parts of Africa and South America) can take up to five days, and anything routed via SWIFT is slower and carries a $10 to $25 fee.

So the same-day speed applies to the major local-account corridors, not universally.

This is why it’s important to compare your business options.