Send Money from the USA to Nepal: What It Really Costs in 2026

All-in cost: the visible fee plus whatever is taken in the exchange rate, measured against the mid-market USD/NPR rate in August 2026.

All-in cost in US dollars on the USD/NPR corridor, August 2026. Green marks the cheapest at that amount. “Mid-market rate, fee only” in the cost-shape column means the service passes the true rate through and charges a visible fee instead.

In rupees, on $1,000 at a mid-market rate near 153.3, Pangea delivers roughly 152,500 NPR and Xoom about 147,900 NPR. That is a difference of nearly 4,700 rupees on a single ordinary transfer, and if you send monthly, roughly 56,000 rupees a year decided by nothing but which icon you tapped.

1. Assuming the honest rate is the cheap one

Wise and Sendwave both give you the mid-market rate with nothing hidden in it, and on many corridors that makes them the obvious pick. Here it does not. Wise's fee on this route is $24.20 on $1,000, many times the cheapest app's entire cost, margin included. Sendwave fares better at $6.89, though that is still well above the leaders.

A transparent rate and a cheap transfer are different claims. On Nepal, several services with a small, visible margin beat the no-margin ones comfortably, because a fraction of a percent taken in the rate is simply less money than a double-digit fee.

2. Crossing Revolut's monthly allowance

Revolut sits mid-table until the last column, where it jumps from $5.87 on $1,000 to $65.66 on $5,000. Its rate margin barely moves; what changes is the fee. Every Revolut plan carries a monthly fair-usage allowance for international transfers, and past it the fee climbs steeply with the amount, from $5.87 on $1,000 to $65.66 on $5,000.

If you send a few hundred dollars a month it is a genuinely good choice. For anything approaching a few thousand it becomes one of the worst on the list. The Revolut fee calculator prices it by plan so you can find your own line.

Nepal has fixed its currency to India's since 1993, at 1.60 Nepalese rupees to one Indian rupee, and Nepal Rastra Bank maintains that peg. India dominates Nepal's trade, so tying the two removes exchange-rate risk from most of what the country buys.

You can watch it hold in the market. In August 2026 the dollar bought about 153.3 Nepalese rupees and about 95.6 Indian rupees. Divide one by the other and you get 1.604, within a quarter of a percent of the official peg, which is about as close as a real market ever sits to a stated number.

Bank deposit.

Nabil Bank, Nepal Investment Mega Bank, Global IME, NIC Asia, Himalayan Bank and Everest Bank are the names you will meet most. You need the account number and the bank, and for some services the branch as well. Get it in writing rather than over the phone.

Cash pickup.

Nepal has an unusually dense payout network through domestic remittance operators, reaching well beyond the Kathmandu valley into hill and terai districts where bank branches thin out. For a family without an account this is often the only workable route, and coverage is genuinely good.

Mobile wallets.

eSewa and Khalti are widely used in Nepal, and some services pay into them directly. Handy for smaller, frequent support payments, though coverage varies by sender.

The 1% federal excise charge that began in 2026 applies to transfers paid for in cash or by money order, and to nothing else. Every service in the table above draws from a bank account or a card, so none of them attract it.

It is worth seeing the scale on this particular route. The cheapest transfer here costs 0.14%. A 1% charge would therefore cost about twice the transfer itself, the levy dwarfing the service. Anyone still walking cash into a storefront for Nepal is paying twice over. Rules like this get revised, so check the current position before a large sum.

1. 01Check, because the spread is sevenfold. On most corridors the gap between best and worst is a few tens of percent. Here the priciest option costs more than seven times the cheapest. No other decision you make on this page comes close.
2. 02Do not equate a clean rate with a cheap transfer. Wise charges no margin and still lands near the expensive end, because the fee does the work instead.
3. 03Automate it. The peg means there is no timing risk, so a standing monthly transfer costs you nothing in lost rate and saves you the decision every month.
4. 04Watch Revolut's allowance if you send large amounts. Excellent under it, among the worst above it.
5. 05Send midweek. Nepal's Sunday-to-Friday week means a late-Friday send from the US is the slowest one you can make.