Sending Money From the UAE: Corridors, Rates, and Fees
The UAE is one of the world's largest remittance senders: residents sent $58.5 billion abroad in 2024, up from $54.0 billion in 2023, according to World Bank personal-remittances data. Because the dirham is pegged to the US dollar at 3.6725, the AED side of every transfer is stable; the cost of a transfer hides entirely in the provider's margin over the mid-market rate plus the fixed fee.
Published 30 August 2026
Mid-Market Reference Rates for the Big Corridors
The table lists the mid-market value of one UAE dirham in the four largest UAE remittance corridors (India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Egypt), with the retrieval date stated under the table.
| Corridor | Per 1 AED (mid-market) |
|---|---|
| India (INR) | 26.0437 |
| Pakistan (PKR) | 75.6592 |
| Philippines (PHP) | 16.9878 |
| Egypt (EGP) | 13.683 |
Mid-market reference rates retrieved 2026-08-30 from exchangerate-api.com; this table is updated daily. Providers quote below these rates; the difference is their margin.
Transfer Cost Calculator: Check Any Provider's Quote
Enter the amount you send in AED and the amount the provider promises to deliver; the calculator compares the quote against the mid-market rate above and shows the all-in cost of the transfer.
How to Compare Providers in One Minute
Four steps expose the true cost of any UAE transfer quote in under a minute, using the mid-market rate as the yardstick.
- Take the mid-market rate for your corridor from the table above (or the USD to AED page for dollar transfers).
- Ask the provider for the all-in receive amount on a fixed send amount, say AED 1,000, including their fee.
- Compute the total cost: (mid-market receive amount − actual receive amount) ÷ mid-market receive amount. Exchange houses and apps in the UAE commonly land between well under 1% and several percent all-in depending on corridor and speed.
- Check the fee floor on small transfers: a fixed AED 15-25 fee dominates the cost of a small transfer regardless of the rate offered.
Why the Peg Matters for Remittance Timing
An AED-to-USD transfer carries no exchange-rate timing risk at all: the peg has held at 3.6725 since 1997. An AED-to-INR or AED-to-PKR transfer is economically a USD-to-INR or USD-to-PKR trade, so the "good day to send" question is a question about the dollar against the destination currency, not about the dirham. Senders who watch rates should watch the destination currency's move against the dollar; the dirham side never moves.
Channels Available in the UAE
Three licensed channels move money out of the UAE (exchange houses, banks, and remittance apps), and their all-in margins differ by several times on the same corridor.
- Exchange houses: the traditional high-street channel; competitive on major corridors, cash-friendly.
- Bank transfers: convenient from a salary account; margins and SWIFT fees are usually the highest of the three channels.
- Licensed remittance apps: typically the tightest margins on digital corridors; verify the provider holds a UAE Central Bank license before first use.
Remittance outflow figures: World Bank Open Data, personal remittances (paid) series for the United Arab Emirates, 2023-2024.