Send Money from the UK to Kenya

Measured on the full cost — the transfer fee plus the exchange-rate margin — Wise is cheapest on this corridor at £100, across the 2 providers we hold checked figures for. Taptap Send advertises 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 Kenyan shillings rather than the headline fee.

At £100, Wise is the cheapest of the 2 providers priced at that amount on this corridor: about £2.82 all in, or 2.82% of the amount sent. Xoom is next at about £7.98. That is the fee plus the exchange-rate margin that applied to a transfer of that size — priced at £100 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.

Delivery ranges from minutes to a few business days depending on the provider and payout method. Sendwave, WorldRemit, Wise and LemFi 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 M-Pesa, bank deposit, cash pickup, airtime top-up, mobile wallet and card payout. The most widely used options in Kenya are M-Pesa mobile money and bank deposit. M-Pesa is the dominant way to receive money in Kenya — most transfers arrive on a phone number within minutes. Not every provider supports every method, so check the table above before you commit.

No. Sendwave, WorldRemit, Taptap Send and Xoom offer cash pickup in Kenya, so your recipient can collect the funds with valid photo ID and the transfer reference number. That said, M-Pesa mobile money and 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 KES, 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.

M-Pesa applies receive limits — Sendwave documents a maximum of two 250,000 shilling transfers per day to one account and a 500,000 shilling wallet balance cap. Larger amounts need to go to a bank account. The shilling has held remarkably steady near KSh129 to the US dollar for more than a year, an unusual run for a currency that spent much of the previous decade weakening. Analysts point to diaspora remittances themselves as part of what is holding it there: dollar inflows from Kenyans abroad have become large and steady enough to help support the currency their own transfers are converted into.