What sending money actually costs
Put in an amount. The bank on one side, a stablecoin card on the other, with the real numbers on both.
No annual fee, no credit check, and the virtual card is $10. Affiliate link.
People do not pick these cards on fees
Ask the card companies and the answer is the same. Most of their customers are not crypto traders. They hold dollars, and this is the easiest way to spend them. Where sending money is expensive, though, the fee moves to the front.
- 1The bank steps disappear
Sell, wait for the withdrawal to clear, wire, wait for the conversion — all of it goes. Topping up takes 3 to 4 minutes and the payment takes a second.
- 2Dollars without a dollar bank account
RedotPay says its growth comes from places where banks will not open one — Latin America, Africa, Asia. You hold digital dollars and spend digital dollars.
- 3You never have to sell
If work pays you in USDT, selling is where the money goes. A freelancer loses $50 to $100 on every $1,000 before it reaches the bank. With a card, what you were paid is what you spend.
- 4No currency exchange when you travel
No exchange counter on arrival, no leftover foreign cash on the way back. It settles into the local currency at the till.
- 5Then the fee
The card charges 1.2% FX plus a few cents of network fee. Against a 3.5% corridor that is a small edge — but against a corridor like Angola or Nigeria, last measured at 16.86% and 16.10%, the fee is the whole story. Which is why the corridor comes first — and why the year on each figure matters.
Sources CoinDesk, 23 Aug 2026 · RedotPay company page · Spark freelancer payments research · World Bank. Checked 3 Sep 2026.
What each card gives you
None of this is in the calculation above. Each card offers something different.
| Card | What you get | FX |
|---|---|---|
| RedotPay | $5 on signup (spend within 30 days) · no annual fee · no credit check · ATM up to $100,000 per withdrawal · no cashback | 1.2% |
| ether.fi Cash | Up to 3% cashback paid in USDC · never holds your private key | 0% on USD and EUR |
| Bybit Card | Advertises up to 10% cashback, but that is Supreme VIP only. At VIP0 the cap is $10 a month — 2% to 4% in practice | - |
| Gnosis Pay | Up to 4% cashback · €30 a year · EU, UK, Argentina and Brazil only | 0% |
All affiliate links, none of which cost you anything extra. Go ether.fi if cashback matters, RedotPay if getting approved matters.
Sources each company's official fee and rewards pages. Checked 2 Sep 2026. Terms change often — check the official page before you sign up.
RedotPay: over 8 million people in 100+ countries,
$12 billion in annualised volume. Across all stablecoin cards, spending has
passed $10 billion, at more than 60,000 transactions a day —
22 times the December 2024 figure.
RedotPay company page · CoinDesk, 23 Aug 2026 · checked 3 Sep 2026
Which countries pay the most
The World Bank tracks the total cost of sending money country by country — fees and FX margin combined. The global average is 6.36%. Narrow it to banks and it is 14.99%. Send by card and it drops to 4.39%.
Sending — what it costs to send from here
The World Bank's country figures stop at 2023. There is nothing for 2024 or 2025. And in the table below, Angola (2021) and Nigeria (2020) are older still — those two corridors have not been measured since.
The averages are where the current numbers are: as of September 2025 the global average is 6.36%, banks alone 14.99%, and sending by card 4.39%. Read the country figures as ranking and direction, then check your own route.
At last measurement, sending out of Angola cost 16.86% (2021). On $5,000 that is $843 — higher even than receiving money in Angola (12.78%, 2023). Whether it still holds is not something the World Bank data can tell us.
| Sending from | Total cost | Why this corridor matters |
|---|---|---|
| Angola | 16.86% (2021) | Highest crypto-card demand anywhere. Kwanza capital controls |
| Nigeria | 16.10% (2020) | Dual naira rate. Large study and trade flows |
| Türkiye | 9.96% | Inflation hedging. Among the highest USDT usage in the world |
| Brazil | 4.60% | Portuguese-language channels already have audiences |
| Saudi Arabia | 4.52% | Gulf migrant workers sending home |
| South Africa | 3.75% | Hub for intra-African transfers |
| United Kingdom | 3.61% | Nigerian and Jamaican diaspora |
| United States | 3.51% | Largest sending country in the world |
| United Arab Emirates | 3.08% | South Asian workers sending to Bangladesh and India |
| France | 2.90% | Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian diaspora |
| Portugal | 2.07% | Angolan and Mozambican diaspora |
Sending from a cheap country (Portugal, 2.07%) into an expensive one (Angola, 12.78%) does not solve it: the cost lands on the receiving side. Both ends are worth checking.
Receiving — what it costs to arrive here
| Sending to | Total cost | Language | Demand |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angola | 12.78% | Portuguese | 1st |
| Algeria | 7.83% | Arabic, French | 2nd |
| Bangladesh | 7.65% | Bengali | 9th |
| Tunisia | 5.54% | Arabic, French | 4th |
| Nigeria | 4.64% | English | - |
| Morocco | 4.17% | Arabic, French | 13th |
| Mozambique | 3.79% | Portuguese | 11th |
| Jamaica | 3.59% | English | 12th |
| Vietnam | 3.46% | Vietnamese | - |
| Bolivia | 3.45% | Spanish | 15th |
| Brazil | 2.42% | Portuguese | - |
| India | 1.76% | Hindi, English | - |
| Philippines | 1.67% | English, Tagalog | - |
The countries at the top have one thing in common: capital controls, or banking that is hard to reach. They are the same places where people search for these cards most.
Sources World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide.
Country figures stop at 2023; nothing has been published for 2024 or 2025.
Receiving figures are all 2023; sending figures carry the year shown
(Angola 2021, Nigeria 2020, the rest 2023). Regional
and instrument averages are Q3 2025. Demand ranking is Google Trends interest in
redotpay over 12 months, top 15 of 84 regions.
Checked 3 Sep 2026. Algeria has no sending figure, only receiving.
The numbers behind the calculator
| Item | Value used |
|---|---|
| Bank cost by country | World Bank average (tables above) |
| Intermediary bank fee | $20 (deducted from the recipient; runs $15 to $25) |
| FX spread | 1% |
| USDT withdrawal | Tron $1 · Solana $0.10 · Polygon $1 · Ethereum $3 |
| USDC withdrawal | Solana $0.01 · BNB Chain $0.20 · Ethereum $2 |
| Exchange sell fee | 0.05% |
| Card FX fee | 1.2% (RedotPay) |
Sources World Bank · Binance withdrawal fees · RedotPay official fee page. Checked 3 Sep 2026. Network fees move with gas — check the withdrawal screen before you confirm.
On the bank route the receiving bank sometimes takes its own cut, and the intermediary fee only shows up at the end. The real bank-side cost can run above what you see here.
Start with the $10 virtual card and order the $100 physical one if it suits you. There is no annual fee. Affiliate link: we earn a commission, you pay nothing extra.