What a transfer to Morocco really costs: the quarterly index
A dated figure, a published method, and a plain list of what the index does not measure.
Sending the equivalent of 200 dollars from France to Morocco cost an average of 7.39% of the amount in the third quarter of 2025, fees and exchange-rate margin together. The three cheapest offers in the same corridor sat at 1.46%. The gap is not two different markets. It is one market and a missing piece of information.
The quarter's figure, corridor by corridor
| Corridor | Average total cost | Median cost | Three cheapest offers | Offers surveyed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| France → Morocco | 7.39% | 3.60% | 1.46% | 39 offers, 17 providers |
| Belgium → Morocco | 3.86% | 3.69% | 1.61% | 22 offers, 10 providers |
| United Kingdom → Morocco | The source publishes no data for this corridor | |||
| Canada → Morocco | The source publishes no data for this corridor | |||
Total cost = advertised fee + exchange-rate margin, for sending the equivalent of USD 200, third quarter of 2025. The World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, available at http://remittanceprices.worldbank.org.
Three columns of numbers, three different questions.
The average is the figure the source database publishes itself. It adds up every offer surveyed and divides by the count, which keeps it comparable from one quarter to the next. It has a known weakness: a handful of very expensive offers pull it upward. On France to Morocco that is exactly what happens, and the distance between 7.39% and a median of 3.60% measures the pull rather than the price of an ordinary transfer.
The median repairs that. It is the offer in the middle, with half the corridor cheaper and half of it dearer.
The three cheapest offers are not a flattering selection. The international target for bringing remittance costs down is judged corridor by corridor on at least three services whose average holds under 5%3. That makes it the official measure of what a well-informed transfer ought to cost.
The whole index lives in the distance between the first column and the last. Same corridor, same quarter, same amount: 7.39% on one side, 1.46% on the other. That difference buys no extra speed and no nearer counter. It buys nothing at all.
Zero fees does not mean zero cost
A transfer has two halves and only one of them is printed. The first is the advertised fee, easy to compare in a second. The second is the margin taken on the exchange rate, the distance between the rate quoted to you and the reference rate of the day. The source database adds the two together, which is what makes its figure usable.
On France to Morocco, 8 of the 39 offers surveyed advertise no fee at all. Their average total cost still comes to 1.90%, rising to 2.58% for the dearest of them. The zero is true. It simply sits on the half that matters less.
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The full move, in thirty seconds and on your own quote, is set out in where the fees you cannot see are hiding.
Two corridors published as absent, and why
If you send money to Morocco from London or from Montreal, the index has a row for you and no number in it. That empty row is a finding, not an oversight.
The source database opens a page for both corridors. It publishes nothing on either one: no offer surveyed, no collection window, no average. Checked page by page on 20 August 2026, it measures six corridors into Morocco, and all six are European.
Filling those two rows from a neighbouring corridor, or from a regional average, would have been easy and would have wrecked the index. A figure estimated where nothing was measured cannot be checked, and an index nobody can check is not worth publishing. So the row stays, and it says what it knows.
The four other corridors into Morocco the source does measure, to place the first two:
| Corridor | Average total cost | Median cost | Offers surveyed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Germany → Morocco | 4.11% | 3.88% | 33 offers, 10 providers |
| Netherlands → Morocco | 5.57% | 4.21% | 25 offers, 9 providers |
| Spain → Morocco | 6.29% | 3.79% | 22 offers, 9 providers |
| Italy → Morocco | 7.21% | 3.39% | 29 offers, 14 providers |
Total cost = advertised fee + exchange-rate margin, for sending the equivalent of USD 200, third quarter of 2025. The World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, available at http://remittanceprices.worldbank.org.
The method, in full
- The source. Remittance Prices Worldwide, the World Bank's public quarterly database of transfer prices, corridor by corridor1. It covers 367 corridors, from 48 sending countries to 105 receiving countries, and aims in each corridor for a sample worth at least 80% of the market.
- The amount. The equivalent of 200 dollars in the sending currency, which is 140 euros from France. It was set in 2008 and has been held steady since, so that quarters stay comparable.
- Total cost. The advertised fee plus the exchange-rate margin, as a percentage of the amount sent.
- The quarter. The third quarter of 2025, the most recent quarter the source publishes as this edition goes out. The France and Belgium corridors were surveyed between 8 August and 2 September 2025.
- What the sample counts. An offer is one row of the survey, and a single provider can hold several of them, one per channel or per speed. Providers are counted by distinct label in the database, where one institution can appear under two labels depending on which partner carries out the transfer.
- What is recorded, what is computed. The average comes from the source unchanged. The median, the extremes and the average of the three cheapest offers are computed by Namup from the same public rows. Open the corridor page, take the total-cost column, redo the arithmetic, and you get these numbers.
- The check. Every corridor was read at the source on 20 August 2026. The published figures live in exactly one place in our code, and an automatic check refuses to publish this page when one of its sentences stops matching them.
What the index does not measure
An index is worth as much for what it refuses to say as for what it states.
- The present. The source publishes with a lag. On 20 August 2026 the most recent quarter it publishes is still the third quarter of 2025. A quarterly index gives a direction of travel, never this morning's price.
- Your transfer. The survey covers one amount and a window of a few weeks. Your cost depends on your sum, your channel and your day.
- What is charged on arrival. Fees taken in the receiving country can exist without appearing in the survey, and the source says so itself2.
- What passes through nobody. Cash carried home by a relative is measured nowhere, and it weighs on plenty of families.
- The ranking. The index does not say who is cheapest, and it never will. It gives the shape of a market. Measuring your own quote stays your move.
- What the source cannot see. Where the rate applied was not disclosed to it, the real cost can run higher than the published one2.
Where the corridor stands against the international target
A shared target exists: bring the global average cost of a transfer under 3% by 2030, and get rid of corridors that cost more than 5%3. The global average today stands at 6.36%1. The first half of that target is a long way off.
The second half is judged differently, and here the Moroccan corridor comes out well. It is met once at least three services in a corridor average 5% or less3. France to Morocco sits at 1.46% and Belgium to Morocco at 1.61%. The cheap road already exists. It is simply badly signposted.
That transfer already has a line in your plan
Money sent to your family is not spending that vanishes. It is a commitment, ranked beside the rent. Inside Namup it lives in the only sum that counts, your income minus your commitments minus your savings, and what remains is genuinely yours to spend. That is the principle behind reverse budgeting. For the wider family picture, read supporting family back home.
Your money lives in two countries. So should your plan. See my plan →
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to send money to Morocco?
In the third quarter of 2025, the most recent quarter the World Bank publishes, the average total cost recorded was 7.39% of the amount from France and 3.86% from Belgium, fees and exchange-rate margin together, for the equivalent of 200 dollars1. The median runs lower: 3.60% from France. Your own transfer depends on your sum and your day.
Why do the average and the median disagree?
Because a handful of very expensive offers distort an average and leave a median untouched. On France to Morocco the average is 7.39% while the offer in the middle is 3.60%. Both figures are correct and they answer different questions: the average describes the whole market, the median describes an ordinary transfer.
Which corridor into Morocco is cheapest?
Of the six corridors the source measures, Belgium shows the lowest average in the third quarter of 2025, ahead of Germany. A corridor is not an offer: inside the dearest corridor on average there are transfers under 2%, and the reverse holds too.
Why do the United Kingdom and Canada carry no figure?
Because the source database publishes nothing for those two corridors: no offer surveyed, no collection window. We would rather write down the absence than estimate a number from a neighbouring corridor. An estimate presented as a measurement is the one defect an index never recovers from.
How is this index built, and can I rebuild it?
Yes, and that is the condition for it counting at all. The average comes from the source unchanged. The median, the extremes and the average of the three cheapest offers come from the public rows on the same corridor page: open it, take the total-cost column, redo the arithmetic.
Can I quote this figure?
Yes. Cite the Namup index with its quarter and its date, and cite the primary source beside it: the World Bank database asks for the attribution "The World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, available at http://remittanceprices.worldbank.org". A screenshot of a table with no date proves nothing, and it turns on whoever shares it.
Does Namup recommend a provider?
No, and this page names none. Namup compares no live offers, earns no commission and moves no money. What it teaches you is the move that still works in ten years: measure the distance between the rate you are quoted and the rate of the day, then decide in dirhams received.
In one sentence
The corridor into Morocco has no single price but a range, from 1.46% for the three cheapest offers to a 7.39% average in the third quarter of 2025, and the gap closes when you read the rate you are quoted instead of the word free.
- World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, third quarter of 2025. Database coverage, the definition of total cost, the reference amount and the 6.36% global average were read on the methodology and home pages; corridor figures were read one corridor page at a time. Checked at source on 20 August 2026. Attribution requested by the database: "The World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, available at http://remittanceprices.worldbank.org". ↩
- World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, methodology: fees charged in the receiving country may not be tracked by the database, and where exchange-rate information was not provided the real total cost can be higher than the figure shown. Checked on 20 August 2026. ↩
- United Nations, Sustainable Development Goal target 10.c and the metadata for indicator 10.c.1, updated 27 March 2026: reduce the transaction costs of migrant remittances to less than 3 per cent by 2030 and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent, the second component being treated as met in a corridor once at least three services there average 5 per cent or less. Checked on 20 August 2026. ↩