People sent $905B across borders in 2024, $685B of it to families in low- and middle-income countries. The average transfer still costs 6.36%. Through a bank, it averages 14.99%. Parity exists to make that overcharge impossible to hide.
$905B
sent across borders, 2024
14.99%
global bank average, all corridors
3.54%
digital-only app average
3%
the UN target by 2030
The whole remittance industry is built on one trick: the fee you can see is small, and the real cost lives in the FX margin, where you cannot. Your bank advertises a modest flat fee, then quietly gives you a rate a few percent worse than the true mid-market rate. You have nothing to compare it against, so the overcharge is invisible. That is how banks average 14.99% across the world’s corridors while the banner still says “low fee” (on the busiest routes we track, banks run lower, but still multiples of the cheapest path).
Meanwhile a new option appeared, the stablecoin route, and it came wrapped in its own dishonesty: "crypto transfers are basically free." The on-chain hop really is cheap. But the buy spread, the off-ramp premium, the cash-out fee and local tax are not, and the "free" pitch never counts them. On our India corridor a good app near 1.1% beats the crypto route once you price in the 1% TDS. On the Philippines, the off-ramp premium is roughly zero and the stablecoin path is genuinely competitive. The truth is corridor-specific, and it moves through the day.
Nobody sends money to feel clever about FX. They send it because someone at the other end is counting on every dollar. The overcharge is invisible on purpose.
Market figures: The World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, available at http://remittanceprices.worldbank.org.
Every comparison site prices fiat only. Every crypto app prices crypto only. Parity is the first to fuse the bank rate, every transfer app, and the real stablecoin off-ramp into a single cheapest-path answer for your exact corridor and amount, and to say plainly when your bank or a good app is the smarter move.
Your bank
The rate you'd actually get, margin exposed against the mid.
Every transfer app
Wise, Western Union and more, priced net-received.
The stablecoin route
The full USDT waterfall, spreads and cash-out included.
Banks, apps and the stablecoin route are all measured against the neutral mid-market rate. A bank can't hide a 5% margin behind a "no fee" banner when the real rate is right there next to it.
The stablecoin route is priced with the buy spread, the on-chain fee, the off-ramp premium, the cash-out fee and local tax. We show it as a range, never a flattering single number.
Account-freeze enforcement in Nigeria, India's 1% TDS at source, order minimums and delays are surfaced as blocks you can read, because the cheapest number is not the whole decision.
Real senders report the rate they actually got. Those true-cost reports catch drift no published fee table admits to, and they are the moat no fiat-only comparison site has.
Every corridor we track carries a number: how much a typical bank overcharges versus the cheapest path we can find right now. It is a public accountability record, ranked worst offenders first, updated as the live feeds move. It is how a family choosing where to cash out, and a policymaker chasing the 3% global target, see the same truth at the same time.
We compare like for like: the same net-received methodology applied to banks, Wise, Western Union and the stablecoin route alike. Nobody gets to hide cost in the FX margin, and the crypto path does not get a free pass on its spreads.
We could quote every stablecoin transfer at under 1% by ignoring the spreads, the cash-out and the tax. We don't, and we never will. When Parity tells you the crypto route wins, that number is believable precisely because we did not hide anything to get there. And when your bank or a transfer app is genuinely the better move, we say so. Trust is the only moat worth having in money.