The World Bank estimates that the global remittance business is worth somewhere around $500 billion annually in cross-border flows. Countries such as the Philippines and those of Central America, which have large groups of citizens working in richer countries, depend heavily on these homecoming funds to drive their economies. Yet our inefficient international financial system ensures that only part of the money gets where it’s supposed to go. Depending on the receiving country, fees for money sent from the United States often hit 10 percent; from the United Kingdom and other countries it can be double that. With exchange-rate costs, the total “friction” in the transaction can run as high as 30 percent.
The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey