Remittance

Remittance is money sent, typically across an international border, from one person to another individual — most often wages a migrant worker sends home to family. The World Bank’s official statistic, personal remittances, combines two flows: personal transfers between resident and non-resident individuals, plus compensation earned by short-term or cross-border workers. In the United States, sending a remittance triggers specific consumer protections: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Regulation E defines a remittance transfer as an electronic transfer of funds a consumer sender asks a provider to send to a designated recipient in another country, regardless of whether the sender holds an account with that provider, and requires providers to disclose the exchange rate and fees before the transfer is confirmed. Remittances typically travel over a specific remittance corridor — a sending-country-to-receiving-country pathway — with cost and payout options that vary by route.

See also: How remittance fees actually work (the FX-spread trap) for what a remittance actually costs once the exchange-rate spread is counted.