What it costs to send money to and from Sudan

Sub-Saharan Africa is the most expensive region in the world to send money to. These are the corridors the World Bank surveyed that touch Sudan, with what the cheapest provider on each actually charges — fee and exchange-rate margin combined.

Sending money to Sudan

Corridor Cheapest Typical Providers
United Arab Emirates → Sudan not comparable 4
Saudi Arabia → Sudan not comparable 2
Qatar → Sudan not comparable 2

Why the spread is so wide

On most of these corridors the dearest way to send money costs several times the cheapest. The gap is rarely about speed or convenience — it is about who you send with. Across the corridors here where the survey priced both, a bank cost more than a transfer operator on 26 of 27, and the difference is worth more than any other single decision in the transfer.

That holds for the amounts the survey prices, which are small — the sums people actually remit. It can reverse on a large transfer, because a bank's flat fee stops mattering once the amount is big enough. Each corridor page prices every provider at whatever amount you enter, which is the only way to see which case you are in.

Part of the cost is also hidden by design. Providers advertise the fee and stay quiet about the exchange rate, so a transfer with no fee at all can be the expensive one once the margin on the rate is counted. Every corridor page here separates the two.

Source: The World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, available at https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org — survey period 2025 Q1, field-collected to 11 March 2025. Licensed CC BY 4.0. These are surveyed benchmark costs from a dated quarterly study, not live quotes. The World Bank does not endorse this use of its data.