Send Money from the USA to Brazil

Measured on the full cost — the transfer fee plus the exchange-rate margin — Remitly is cheapest on this corridor at $1,000, across the 5 providers we hold checked figures for. LemFi and WorldRemit 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 Brazilian reals rather than the headline fee.

At $1,000, Remitly is the cheapest of the 5 providers priced at that amount on this corridor: about $0.60 all in, or 0.06% of the amount sent. Instarem is next at about $7.50. 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.

Delivery ranges from minutes to a few business days depending on the provider and payout method. Taptap Send, LemFi, WorldRemit and Xoom 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 Mercado Pago, Pix, cash pickup, bank deposit and mobile wallet. The most widely used options in Brazil are Pix instant payments and bank deposit. Pix has transformed payments in Brazil — providers that support it can deliver funds in seconds, any day of the week. Not every provider supports every method, so check the table above before you commit.

No. Western Union, WorldRemit, Xoom and Xe Money Transfer offer cash pickup in Brazil, so your recipient can collect the funds with valid photo ID and the transfer reference number. That said, Pix instant payments 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 USD to BRL, 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 USA under FinCEN and state money-transmitter licences, 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.

Pix is the corridor. Remitly, Taptap Send, LemFi, Sendwave and Xoom all pay into it, and Remitly charges nothing for it at all. Western Union, Wise, Revolut, Paysend and WorldRemit do not publish Pix payout. A Pix payout needs the recipient's CPF (Brazilian tax ID) and a Pix key - an email, phone number, CPF or random key - not a conventional account number. Sending caps differ widely: Western Union generally allows up to 5,000 USD (and 5,000 BRL to its digital wallet), while Taptap Send allows up to 52,000 BRL per Pix transfer. Zero-fee claims here mean different things. Remitly's $0 Pix fee and LemFi's zero transaction fee are published permanent terms; Sendwave publishes no fee figure at all, so its cost sits in the rate. Cash pickup is the minority option on this corridor - only Xoom, Western Union and WorldRemit offer it, and everyone else requires a bank or Pix account. A zero-fee Pix payout is not zero to your recipient. Brazil levies IOF, a federal tax on financial operations, on the currency conversion itself — about 0.38% on money arriving from abroad for another person, deducted by the Brazilian bank at the moment dollars become reais, which is roughly R$19 on a US$1,000 transfer. It is not a provider markup and it will not appear anywhere in the quote you are shown, so the honest way to read Remitly's $0 Pix fee or LemFi's zero transaction fee is that the provider takes nothing, not that nothing is taken. One case differs: if you are sending to an account in your own name rather than someone else's, Brazilian guidance reports a higher rate (commonly cited at 1.1%). Published Brazilian summaries of IOF contradict each other freely and several rates were moved by decree in May 2025, so treat these as the order of magnitude and confirm with the receiving bank if the exact figure matters.