Send Money from the UK to India

Measured on the full cost — the transfer fee plus the exchange-rate margin — Wise is cheapest on this corridor at £1,000, across the 3 providers we hold checked figures for. Remitly, Revolut and Ria Money Transfer advertise no transfer fee here, which looks cheaper and often is not: a provider with no fee recovers it in the rate, and the margin is usually the larger of the two costs. The cheapest provider also changes with the amount you send, so compare the final sum that arrives in Indian rupees rather than the headline fee.

At £1,000, Wise is the cheapest of the 3 providers priced at that amount on this corridor: about £5.14 all in, or 0.51% of the amount sent. Western Union is next at about £6.19. That is the fee plus the exchange-rate margin that applied to a transfer of that size — priced at £1,000 specifically, not worked out from a measurement taken at some other amount. It covers a bank transfer; cash pickup and mobile wallet payouts are priced separately. The margins were measured by Wise's comparison service rather than published by the providers themselves, and other providers here may be cheaper and are not priced this way.

Yes. Up to £2,500, Wise costs least on this corridor; from £5,000 upwards, Western Union does. The change happens somewhere between those two amounts — they are the amounts actually priced, so naming a precise crossing point would be a guess dressed as a figure. This happens because a transfer costs a flat fee plus a percentage of the amount, and those two scale in opposite directions: on a small transfer the fee dominates, on a large one the exchange-rate margin does. It is why a comparison taken at a single amount can point you at the wrong provider for yours.

Delivery ranges from minutes to a few business days depending on the provider and payout method. WorldRemit, Xoom, Taptap Send and Ria Money Transfer can deliver within minutes when you pay by debit card. Bank-funded and economy transfers typically take one to three business days but usually cost less. Transfers sent outside banking hours or over a weekend may not settle until the next working day.

Across the providers we compare, the available payout methods are UPI, bank deposit, cash pickup, mobile wallet and airtime top-up. The most widely used options in India are IMPS and NEFT bank deposit. India's IMPS rail settles instantly around the clock, so bank deposits often land within minutes rather than days. Not every provider supports every method, so check the table above before you commit.

No. Remitly, WorldRemit, Western Union, Xoom, Ria Money Transfer and MoneyGram offer cash pickup in India, so your recipient can collect the funds with valid photo ID and the transfer reference number. That said, IMPS and NEFT bank deposit generally cost less than cash collection.

Providers rarely give you the mid-market rate — the reference rate you see on Google or Reuters. Instead they add a margin, typically between 0.4% and 4%, and keep the difference. That margin is often larger than the visible transfer fee, which is why a "no fee" service can still be more expensive overall. For GBP to INR, compare the quoted rate against the mid-market rate to see the real spread you are paying.

Yes, provided you use a licensed provider. Every service listed on this page is regulated in the UK under the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which requires safeguarding of customer funds and identity verification. Send only to people you know personally, keep your transfer reference private, and be sceptical of anyone pressuring you to send money urgently to someone you have not met.

Yes. Each provider sets its own transfer limits, which vary by how much identity verification you have completed and how you pay. Larger transfers may require additional documentation such as proof of source of funds. For transfers above roughly £10,000, a specialist foreign-exchange broker will often beat an app on rate.

UPI payout is now offered by six of the ten providers here — Wise, Remitly, Western Union, Xoom, Paysend and Taptap Send — but not by WorldRemit, Ria or MoneyGram on their UK pages. If you want the money in a UPI ID rather than an account number, that choice narrows the field before price does. UPI carries a per-transfer ceiling that several providers publish: Wise and Taptap Send both state 200,000 INR, and Western Union states real-time UPI up to 100,000 INR. Above those limits the transfer falls back to IMPS or NEFT and stops being instant, so a larger transfer is not simply a bigger version of a smaller one. India restricts what a personal remittance may be for. Wise requires a purpose code — education, medical, travel, visiting expenses and similar — and states you cannot transfer to India for investment or charitable donation. Wise will pay into NRE and NRO accounts but will not send from one. Published per-transfer ceilings differ by more than a factor of ten: Ria's UK calculator accepts 1 to 8,000 GBP, WorldRemit allows 8,000 GBP by card but 100,000 GBP by bank transfer, Remitly states up to 75,000 GBP, and Taptap Send states 99,000 GBP. On a large transfer the limit, not the fee, decides who can carry it. Cash pickup is capped low at some providers. Xoom states a maximum payout of 50,000 INR and requires the recipient to bring the transaction number and photo identification. Two different things get called "UPI" here, and the difference is money. What the six providers above offer is paying INTO a UPI ID: the transfer still crosses the border on a conventional rail and is handed to UPI at the Indian end, so you pay conventional pricing for it. A native UPI-to-UPI international link is a separate thing, live in 11 countries — Singapore, the UAE, France, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Qatar, Cambodia, Greece and the Maldives — and the United Kingdom is not among them, despite being one of India's largest remittance sources. India used Global Fintech Fest in September 2026 to push for more such links precisely because conventional transfers cost senders 3-4%, but no UK timeline has been announced and the only fully two-way link that exists (India-Singapore) took over 18 months to negotiate. Treat UPI payout here as speed and convenience for your recipient, not a discount for you.