I had very similar problems when trying to send small amounts of money to Laos and Vietnam. I usually use Transferwise, but a friend was in a place where he couldn't access his bank account so needed to do a cash pickup using his id card. Western Union is usually good for this but I didn't want to pay high WU charges and so after much google searching i came across
www.remitly.com . I was very happy with this service and my first transfer was free. Of course, everyone's situation is different but I reccomend having a look at Remitly to see if it suits anyones needs.