Remitly vs Xoom

What Remitly offers

Remitly provides overseas money transfer services to:

• Foreign Bank Accounts
• Cash pick up locations
• Mobile Money solutions (not available in all countries)

Remitly also offers a regular transfer service for people who need to do repeated international money transfers for the same amount each time. For example, monthly pensions.

Remitly does not offer

• Personal account management
• Travel debit cards
• Digital wallet services

Sending limits apply to customers for international money transfers.

Xoom lets personal customers transfer money to a significant number of countries, through different channels.

What Xoom does

• International money transfers
• Cash pick-ups
• International bill payments
• Home delivery of money

What Xoom doesn’t do

• Personal account managers
• Regular transfers
• Unique local multi-currency accounts
• Digital wallet
• FX optimised travel card
• Currency hedging tools

Remitly does not offer services for businesses. Their service is specialised and tailored for personal use.

Xoom does not provide services for businesses.

Remitly fees are hidden within the exchange rate plus an additional fee on top. The fees on the exchange rate can be up to 2% of the transfer amount.

Additional fees apply for the transfer of funds. These can be simple for some countries and complex tiered fees for other countries. 

Economy Transfer Fee - Up to US$3.99

Express Transfer Fee - Between US$4.99 and US$99.99 for larger transfer amounts when receiving in USD.

Xoom fees

Exchange rate margin fee - This is up to 2% for commonly traded currencies, and can be more than 5% for exotic currencies. 

Additional fees - The transfer fee varies based on the currencies being traded, the transfer amount, the payment method and the transfer method.

• Debit and credit card payments tend to attract added fees.
• Transfers to cash pick-up centers are typically more expensive than bank account transfers.
• The Bill Pay service comes with a flat transfer fee of $/£/€ 2.99. This is not including the exchange rate margin.

Registration - Remitly has a smooth account creation process. The website and mobile app are easy to use.

ID Verification - ID verification is not required for Tier 1 membership but this lowers the account sending limits. Tier 2 and 3 require increased proof of identification and source of funds. This can be a slower process. 

Transfer speed - Generally between 2 - 3 days upon payment.

Low minimum transfer limits - Send under $5

Low maximum transfer limits - Transfer limits are tiered based on your ID verification. Even with tier 3 ID verification. 

Low maximum sending limits - After full ID verification, you may only send up to $60,000 within 180 days. That’s low!

Sign up - Registration is simple, and becomes even easier for existing PayPal customers.

ID verification - Level 1 membership comes without the need for ID verification.

Payment options -  Bank transfers, debit cards, credit cards and PayPal.

Mobile apps - Available for Android and iOS.

Minimum transfer amount - Low minimum transfer amount.

Transfer limit - Xoom has 24-hour, 30-day, and 180-day transfer limits.

Destination countries - Remitly specialises in sending to South American, Asian and African countries. Sending to more popular countries like the UK, USA and Canada is not supported.

Language support - Remilty supports 11 languages. They have local settlement accounts for sending funds to Remitly freely and easily in Singapore, Australia, Europe, UK and the USA.

Customer service - Customer support can be contacted by their website’s online chat service. Phone support is also available but only in English and Spanish between 3:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. PT.

Supported payment currencies - Xoom lets customers send money from more than 70 countries.It accepts payments in USD, CAD, EUR and GBP.

Supported destination currencies - Xoom lets you send money to around 130 countries, in around 80 currencies. 

Supported countries for bill payments - Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicargua and Vietnam.

Multilingual customer support - Customers get multilingual customer support. Languages include English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Filipino, Chinese and Arabic.

Foreign language website access - Xoom's website is available in a number of languages such as  French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Polish, Arabic, Filipino, Chinese and  Vietnamese.

Transparency - Remitly’s transparency on fees is quite poor. They show the real exchange rate below their money transfer widget but the ‘received amount’ in the widget does not use that rate. Remitly uses the real exchange rate plus approximately 2%.

The additional fees for sending to a country can be found clearly within the help center. However, it is not shown to the customer going through the money transfer process until after a few steps.

Remitly & TrustPilot - Remilty’s lack of transparency on fees can be quite confusing which is reflected in many poor reviews on TrustPilot. Many poor Remitly reviews are about transparency on fees and sudden account closures or funds not arriving at their destination. 

Where Xoom does well

Regulated - Xoom is regulated by the US federal government and various state regulatory bodies. It is licensed to provide its services in all its countries in its transfer network.

Trustpilot - Xoom gets an Excellent rating on Trustpilot. However, a number of complaints highlight lengthy turnaround times and failed transfers. 
 

Xoom challenges

Fees transparency - Xoom applies a margin on existing exchange rates. This can be over 5% for some currencies. 

Customer support - The company does not seem to respond to any of its customers' reviews on Trustpilot and the Apple App store. Many customers also complain about receiving poor customer service over the phone.