The hidden fees eating your remittances (and how to avoid them)
Most remittance providers don't lie outright. They just don't tell the whole truth. Here's exactly where the money disappears — and how Greengate built its fee model differently.
Tunde Adeyemi
Head of Product · 14 July 2026
Sending money across borders shouldn't feel like a magic trick — where you put in £200 and your family receives ₦280,000 when the mid-market rate says they should get ₦330,000. Yet for millions of Africans in the diaspora, that's the daily reality.
The gap doesn't come from one obvious charge. It comes from a layered set of small extractions that compound quietly: a "transfer fee" of £5, an exchange rate marked up 4% from the real rate, a "receiving fee" deducted on arrival, and a correspondent bank charge your provider conveniently forgot to mention. Each one alone seems manageable. Together, they can cost you 15–20% of what you send.
At Greengate, we built the fee model starting from one question: what would you be comfortable showing on the receipt? The answer became our product. One low flat fee. The mid-market rate, refreshed every 60 seconds. A rate lock that holds for 30 minutes once you start. And a receipt that shows the exact naira your recipient will receive before you tap send.
This isn't charity — it's possible because we don't rely on the exchange rate spread as a second revenue line. We make money on the flat fee alone, which means our interest and your interest are perfectly aligned: the higher the real rate, the happier we both are.
So next time you compare remittance apps, don't just look at the advertised fee. Look at the exchange rate they're quoting relative to xe.com or Google. That gap is your hidden cost — and it's usually bigger than the fee they're advertising.