How to send money to Cambodia?

One of my regulars in Pattaya is back in Cambodia and needs money. I would send him 1000 THB or 30 USD, but he has no bank account in Thailand (that would be the easiest way for me) and suggests I use Western Union.

I have read/heard many bad things about their pricing structure and never used it myself, but had a look on their website: for him to receive 30 USD, I would have to pay 2.90 EUR fees which is something I would consider, but the exchange rate (my account is in Euro) is 1 EUR = 1.01 USD on WU whereas xe.com gives 1 EUR = 1.12 USD. This is where I draw the line.

Transferwise does not offer to send money to Cambodia and says that 97% of population does not have a bank account anyway.

I was forced to used paypal for some business on ebay 10 or 15 years with no other option to send or receive money. For that reason, I blacklisted paypal.

What to do? I.e. how to send money to Cambodia without paying high fees.

If you just want to send the occasional 1000 baht then it’s a no brainier. Use western Union and accept their extra charge.
Surely you can afford it on such a small amount you are sending?

The amount proposed is perfectly reasonable as a donation for an occasional acquaintance & it's also not very polite to question that either.

Also, with money transfers it's partly about the principle of not losing 20% of your money when transferring from one place to another.
And it's partly about learning how to optimise transactions for future. If I didn't bother trying to minimize overseas transaction costs, I'd be several thousand pounds poorer at this stage in life.

Anyhow, at risk of breaking the mould with a reply that's trying to be helpful, reading through the banking forum at Khmer440 might be worthwhile (no promises): https://khmer440.com/chat_forum/viewforum.php?f=39

Does the guy have a mailing address? If so, why not just pop it in an envelope and send it to him?

(Presuming you remember how to use a post office! Lol)

Guys from Cambodia gave me tip:

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WU , Money gram and Ria are accepting here

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Originally Posted by gerefan2

Surely you can afford it on such a small amount you are sending?

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It's a matter of principle.

The boy sent me a Thai bank account (of a friend of him) to which I transferred the money from my Thai bank account (no charges).

My experiences with international mail (letters and parcels; postcards are fine) are rather negative. About 2012 I sent my SIM card and some money (to top up my SIM card) to a Farang friend in Thailand, the letter disappeared. Four weeks ago I sent a parcel to a friend in Portugal, it arrived a week ago.

Sometimes, especially in Thailand, it is easier to overlook principles for a small amount of money if it makes life easier! Ask any policeman

Transfer rates are little over 10% with WU....Not 20%.

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Originally Posted by gerefan2

Transfer rates are little over 10% with WU....Not 20%.

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If that's the TOTAL charge from money leaving my account to it landing in his hands in Cambodia, I suspect it's not unreasonable for a modest transfer to Cambodia.

Assuming there are no charges on the receiving side.


I made a Paypal transfer to the Philippines earlier in the year. There was a slightly unreasonable charge declared when I sent the money. Then Paypal took another undeclared cut on the receiving side. I had no idea about the latter figure when I sent the money. Not happy.
[Disclosure: I hold Paypal stock, so should encourage you all to use their expensive forex services. I just cannot bring myself to do that]

Sign up for Xoom (a Paypal subsidiary so very easy to log-in with your PP account) or WorldRemit. Currently the latter has a promo with no fees for the 3 first transfers if you enter a code. Both have the option of the recipient collecting the money at bank or similar (no local bank account needed). Both are cheaper than WU (in particular for larger amounts where the poor exchange rate applied by WU really hits you). Admittedly, I havn't checked if working for Cambodia but it works very well to Colombia.

MoneyGram should also be an option (I have never used it though).

Some helpful ideas by Speedoo1.

I compared WorldRemit v Xoom, see table.

Xoom appears better, however:
1 WorldRemit explicitly say in their T&C that there is NO CHARGE for receiving the money as cash. I cannot find any similar statement for Xoom & am a little suspicious, as Xoom is owned by Paypal.
With a Paypal branded transfers, they are rather greedy & triple dip. Charging the sender, making a margin on the conversion AND charging the receiver.

2 One converts to KHR and the other converts to USD. As any regular visitor to Cambodia will know, the 2 currencies are interchangeable and the ATMs in Cambodia even dish out USDs by default. I haven't adjusted for this, as I don't know the local conversion loss and believe it's fairly small anyway, from past experience.

Both seem to be credible US and UK owned companies. Mind you, some would have once thought former DAX constituent Wirecard would have been another trustworthy developed country money transfer business.

If it were me, I would be tempted to try Xoom. Or at least register and go through the process, to see if any surprise charges crop up. Has anyone here used this ?

I sent my friend in Cambodia some money on 28/07/2020 . The exchange rate on xe.com at the time was $1AUD = $0:715USD
I used HAI HA ....for the first time ever. They are in partnership with WING in Cambodia.

https://help.hhmt.com.au/hc/en-us/ca...es-Information

The transfer can be sent online or in person through their agents, I used a local agent.
I sent $1000.00 AUD my friend received $705:80 USD. When I paid the agent, I was sent a CODE , I then forwarded that CODE to my friend. He went to his nearest WING office in town, showed them the code,they confirmed his telephone number, gave him the money. It took him about five minutes with WING.
The whole process from supplying personal details, paying the transfer and my friend receiving the money took about one hour!
As I mentioned this was the first time I used HAI HA, normally I use a bank transfer. The differences are, it was faster, he received at least $60 USD more than had I used my bank! My Australian bank gives a crap exchange rate and charges a small fee ,( but still robbing me), my friends bank takes another cut . I am very pleased with this funds transfer company and will definitely use them again.
I think this company only operates from Australia...not certain about that, but australians can transfer to Thailand, Indonesia, Philipines and a few other countries.

A 1.29% loss seems very reasonable, considering you're transferring to a country for which some of the usual low cost options will not be available.
Also, they're handing over cash, hence there should be more handling costs than with a bank transfer.

Of course, it's not necessarily a good thing if Khmer bar boys find out it's that easy to transfer money.

Just for clarity, I quoted xe.com rates in my last post, but those are "mid-market rates" as explained by that website:
-"All figures are live mid-market rates, which are not available to consumers and are for informational purposes only. "-


Mere mortals such as me would get lesser exchange rates,making HAI HA rates even more competitive.

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Originally Posted by Zebedee

Just for clarity, I quoted xe.com rates in my last post, but those are "mid-market rates" as explained by that website:
-"All figures are live mid-market rates, which are not available to consumers and are for informational purposes only. "-
Mere mortals such as me would get lesser exchange rates,making HAI HA rates even more competitive.

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I knew you quoted XE mid-market rates.
I measure the loss on any foreign currency transaction against that mid-market rate. With the expectation that there always will be a loss.

Something like 0.5% loss would be a very good result, as you might get with Transferwise or even the most competitive cash exchanges.

You don't have a Transferwise option for Cambodia. As stated, I think a 1.3% loss is a very good result for a less competitive market.

For example, compare with the c**** at Paypal, who charge £25 (5.6%) to receive £450 from China & charge the sender something similar on top of this, so over 10%. Transferwise is also not available for outbound transfers from China. I'm fairly sure there is a better option waiting to be discovered.

My UK bank charged 3.2% for an overseas transfer of several thousand pounds, in the days before I discovered Transferwise.

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Originally Posted by goji

If it were me, I would be tempted to try Xoom. Or at least register and go through the process, to see if any surprise charges crop up. Has anyone here used this ?

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As stated above I have used Xoom a few times for transfers to Colombia. There were no fee or charge to be paid by the recipient (I think I would have been told by the Colombianos that benefitted from transfers) and there was no information on the webpage when completing the transfers that the recipient had to pay something for collection procedure.

I decided to send some money to a gay guide I have used in Siem Reap, no sex, as he was suffering. He was selling some organic beauty products, so showing initiative. In the end, I said forget the products, I will send money. He gave me his Bank Account, I sent £150, and was charged £17 by my Bank, Lloyds. He only received £100, the Cambodian Bank took the rest!

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Originally Posted by Keith

I decided to send some money to a gay guide I have used in Siem Reap, no sex, as he was suffering. He was selling some organic beauty products, so showing initiative. In the end, I said forget the products, I will send money. He gave me his Bank Account, I sent £150, and was charged £17 by my Bank, Lloyds. He only received £100, the Cambodian Bank took the rest!

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That was a large amount to lose even by Cambodian Bank standards. Would it be possible your bank gave you a poor exchange rate in addition to their fee? Thats how my Australian Bank "operates", they then emphasise their "low" fee in the hope the customer doesn't notice their robbing exchange rates! I hate to think of the amount of money both Cambodian and Australian banks gouged from me over the years.
And the sad thing is that loss is big money to your friend in Cambodia especially these days.

If you are sending the money online from your bank, it is usually cheaper to send your currency and allow the receiving bank convert it to Dollars...that is if your bank gives you that option. My bank does not give me that option when sending to Cambodia, but does allow me the option when sending to Thailand.

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Originally Posted by Zebedee

That was a large amount to lose even by Cambodian Bank standards. Would it be possible your bank gave you a poor exchange rate in addition to their fee? Thats how my Australian Bank "operates", they then emphasise their "low" fee in the hope the customer doesn't notice their robbing exchange rates! I

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Some customers have a blind spot to such charges.
In the past, I've even seen people triumphantly post about their exchange with no fees, whilst totally ignoring the dismal exchange rate. It's almost like they try to forget about it as fast as possible, which is an expensive attitude.
I prefer to make a note of when I'm screwed on a transaction and try to avoid it in future. e.g. The examples where Paypal have screwed me, as already posted here.


It's quite a pleasure to see the likes of yourself and Keith being equally open about such things.

I also see people being in denial over stockbrokers fees. They bitch and moan about a broker charging an extra £5 for overseas share trading, yet the same people haven't even checked the spread on the foreign exchange element of this. For UK brokers that's typically 1.5%, which is obscene and if you spend just $10,000 on a stock purchase, that's $150 in forex charges, when it really should be under $50.

Update on sending money to Cambodia. Contrary to my OP, you can send USD to a bank in Cambodia with transferwise.

details for my transfer on transferwise website:
You send 550 EUR
Total fees (included) 6.01 EUR
Amount we'll convert 543.99 EUR
Guaranteed rate (49 hours) 1.18145
XXX gets 642.70 USD
Should arrive by October 30th

The money arrived already on 27oct2020, but it was only 587.70 USD. That's exactly 55 USD less than what transferwise said, of which 10 USD "International Inward Transfer Fee" declared in the receiver's receipt and a further 45 USD disappeared somewhere along the way (most probably on the Cambodian bank side, Advanced Bank of Asia Limited).

Overall 550 EUR -> 587.70 USD corresponds to a rate of 1.07, which is 9% lower than xe.com 1.18. My worst money transfer ever in absolute loss of 55 USD (for highest relative loss of 17% see Brasil report).

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https://transferwise.com/help/articl...outside-the-us

TransferWise supports sending USD to people outside of the US, but to do this we need to send your transfer via the SWIFT network.

Because SWIFT incurs additional costs, we will add a fee of 3.20 USD to your transfer to pay for this. We charge the same fee for payments to Hong Kong through CHATS system.

Your bank or other banks the money passes through on the way may also charge you a fee, so your recipient might get less. These fees tend to be around 25–50 USD, but there's no way for TransferWise to know what they'll be in advance.

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Intransparent and expensive, I will never send money online to Cambodia again unless it's a matter of life or death.
I can only hope that immigrant workers in Thailand have better ways to transfer money to their home countries.

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Originally Posted by christianpfc

Overall 550 EUR -> 587.70 USD corresponds to a rate of 1.07, which is 9% lower than xe.com 1.18. My worst money transfer ever in absolute loss of 55 USD (for highest relative loss of 17% see Brasil report).

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1 Thank you for warning us.

2 Please query this with Transferwise.
(i) The Transferwise side of it is promoted as being fully transparent, which it has been in my experience.
(ii) Then the whole idea of it is the payment to the receiving bank is a domestic transfer in local currency, so it should not attract anything more than domestic banking charges. I presume Transferwise should confirm if this was a domestic payment to the receiving bank.

I hope the use of bitcoin will help these migrant workers to obviate the necessity to patronise the banking institutions. This is becoming very popular in Nigeria and other African countries.

I just sent some money to Laos yesterday by Moneygram. I presume it works the same for Cambodia. I used the Moneygram's web and my credit card and everything went smooth and quick. I sent 300 EUR and I had to pay 3.29 EUR as a fee. The official fee was 3,99 EUR but I got a discount of 0,80 EUR for being a returning customer). My friend in Laos received 350,67 USD (he actually received only 350 USD).

The whole account is: I payed 303,29 EUR and he received 350 USD, The final rate is 1,000 EUR = 1,154 USD, just 1,7% more than xe.com (1 EUR = 1,174 USD)

My friend received the money in cash just 1 hour later. I think it is not a bad deal.

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Originally Posted by siscu58

My friend in Laos received 350,67 USD (he actually received only 350 USD).

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Seems like a good conversion from Eur to USD.

Did they actually pay him in USD ?
USD is effectively the currency in Cambodia, since the ATMs issue USD and USD are typically used for most transactions of over $1~2.
However, in Laos, with the exception of hotels catering to tourists, most transactions seem to be in Lao Kip and businesses have become reluctant to accept USD. So I imagine he will have to convert it.

However, I did notice some very low spreads on currency conversion when last in Laos in early 2019.

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Originally Posted by goji

Did they actually pay him in USD ?.

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No. I was wrong. I thought they payed my friend in USD because that is what the website said but in fact they paid in Lao Kip, as you said.

The exchange rate was surprisingly good. For 300 EUR (cost 303,29 EUR) MoneyGram offered 350,67 USD in their web and finally my friend was given 3,490,000 LKP..
This makes the actual rate at 1 EUR = 11,507 LKP (303,29 EUR for 3,490,000 LKP), well over the official exchange rate.

Since the xe.com mid-market exchange rate is 1 EUR = 10,884 LKP,
It makes a very good deal in my opinion.

Cambodia central bank has just issued their blockchain e-money "Bakong" enabling payments and money transfers to e-wallets, by means of QR codes and phone numbers. Not sure if this digital service is available to foreigners who are not residing in the country. I'm sure you will find more information about the crypto currency in the coming weeks.

I got a reply from transferwise:

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I've taken a look at your transfer xxxxxx, and can see that your money was sent out via the SWIFT International payment method.

If you send money in a currency that isn't the standard currency for that recipient's country, (in this case sending funds to arrive as USD outside of the US in Cambodia), then a SWIFT transfer is the only option.

When sending money with SWIFT, it moves from the sending bank through several intermediary banks before reaching your recipient's bank, where the money is deposited.

Whilst our own fee will always be visible when you set up your transfer, these intermediary banks have their own, separate fees, so your recipient may get less than you intended. For this reason we will always show you a warning message regarding the possible extra charges.

Unfortunately, there's no way for TransferWise to estimate what this fee will be, in advance. You can read more about using SWIFT here.

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Not much wiser. Another point is that a time of 2-5 days was predicted, but the money arrived the following day. And there were no options for quick transfer at higher cost.

That's interesting, since as we know, the USD is in widespread use in Cambodia & is even issued from bank ATMs.

Checking further, Transferwise have a list of countries that we can send money to via the Transferwise network.
https://transferwise.com/help/articl...-can-i-send-to
Including Thailand & Vietnam, but not Cambodia or Laos.


If we click the link at the bottom of the page on sending USD to countries outside the US, it states that the Swift Network is used and there may be additional fees charged by the receiving bank.

So transfers to anywhere not on their list might get rather expensive.

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.

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Originally Posted by Midguy1

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.

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Thank you for posting this.

I checked the "Rates and Fees" page

#1 Their economy fees are £1.99 for recieving in USD and £3.99 for KHR.
#2 The "Rates and Fees" page does NOT tell me what the Rates are. So I need to open an account to find out what the exchange rate is.

From past experience, any provide that requires the customer to open an account BEFORE they tell you what the rates are tends to offer a poor exchange rate. So double dipping with the fees.

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Originally Posted by Midguy1

I was very happy with this service and my first transfer was free.

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What does "free" mean in this instance ? I presume they waived the £1.99 or £3.99 fee, but what about the exchange rate ?

Siscu58 follows best practice (above), since he reports what left one account, what arrived in the other and compares it with XE.com mid market rates, so the total loss on the transaction is clear.

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Originally Posted by goji

Thank you for posting this.

I checked the "Rates and Fees" page.

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All the Cambodian boys I know have an SCB account in Thailand that they can use in Cambodia via their ATM card as the SCB owned bank in Cambodia is everywhere. A friend of mine uses Transferwise to send money to the SCB account in Thailand and the boy (currently in Cambodia) just uses his SCB ATM card there for withdrawals.

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Originally Posted by Midguy1

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.

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Thanks from me also for your helpful post Midguy1.
While remitly.com may have been convenient for you at the time, many of us here are trying to "weed out" money transfer companies that are expensive to use on a regular basis. Sometimes they try to disguise their charges by offering low fees, but they make up for this quite handsomely ( in their favour ) by giving poor exchange rates or failure to tell the customer of hidden fees e.g. the recipient bank charges and/or intermediary bank fees. These issues have been highlighted previously by posters on this Thread if you're interested.
I'm afraid I have to agree with goji as I too would be very suspicious of a company requiring signup in order to get full disclosure of their total cost for a transfer. Nevertheless I have learned ( from your post ) of an additional transfer company I can use... in case of an emergency.