Monito's Xoom Review: Exchange Rates, Safety, 2022 Score, and Why You Should Find Alternatives
Olivia Willemin
Guide
Jan Watermann
Reviewer
Xoom by PayPal is a poor money transfer provider (6.4/10), rarely recommended by Monito’s experts. Though it is a reputable provider (9/10) and is highly rated by its users (6.5/10), Xoom regularly has some of the worst fees and exchange rates in the market (3/10). Despite its overall rankings, Xoom is competitive in select corridors from the US, especially with cash pickups.
What Monito Likes About Xoom
- A good variety of pay-in and pay-out options;
- A large number of destinations around the globe;
- Transfers are fast and easy to make;
- Highly rated by customers.
What Monito Dislikes About Xoom
- Rarely the cheapest option;
- A limited number of origin countries;
- Exchange rate margin is not disclosed and 74% of fees are hidden.
Xoom is rarely a cheap option. Find stronger x-rates and lower fees:
Key Questions About Xoom Answered
Who is Xoom For?
Xoom is ideal for users looking to quickly send money from the United States to Latin America, the Philippines, and India. Although it doesn't always provide the best rates, its variety of pay-out methods, including phone airtime and bill payments to some countries, as well as its integration of PayPal, can make it situationally useful for specific use cases.
How Monito Reviewed Xoom's Services
To review Xoom, we applied Monito’s rigorous methodology to score Xoom along with 20+ of its most popular competitors, including Wise (formerly TransferWise), Remitly, and WorldRemit, to see how it fared. The scoring process began with setting up a Xoom account and included thorough testing of its desktop and mobile app services. To analyze Xoom’s fees and exchange rates, we screened more than one million comparisons on Monito’s engine from the past three months to check how often Xoom was the cheapest and how often they offered competitive rates. To determine whether their fees were transparent, we checked 11 typical customer transactions for the provider, such as a $250 transfer from the US to Mexico. Finally, we ran a background check on Xoom, looking at how they were regulated and by which authority, and considering their security practices and whether they had any publicly known legal, privacy, fraud, or technical issues. As with all Monito reviews, our Xoom score was peer-reviewed by at least one Monito expert.
Reviews are written independently by Monito's editors and recommendations given are our own. Services you sign up with using our links may earn us a commission.
Trust & Credibility
Background check
Xoom is fully licensed and authorized by the relevant authorities in the countries in which it operates.
Security & reliability
Xoom’s platform is fully secured, making use of top-notch security protocols, such as segregated user accounts and HTTPS.
Company size
Founded in 2001, Xoom is a well-established international money transfer provider that transferred approximately $10 billion for 250 million customers in the last year. Xoom has 320 employees.
Transparent pricing
Xoom is only partially transparent in disclosing its fees: approximately 74% of its fees are hidden in the exchange rate margin.
Is Xoom Paypal Safe?
Owned by PayPal since 2015, Xoom is a credible and well-established name in the money transfer world, transferring approximately $10 billion annually for over two million customers, that as a bonus is backed by one of the biggest names in the field.
Is Xoom Legit?
Yes. Not only is Xoom a fully-secured and well-established international money transfer provider in its own right, but it is also a service of PayPal, one of the largest international money transfer service in the world. PayPal is regulated by the federal government, as well as by various U.S. state governments and agencies.
Service & Quality
Opening an account
Opening an account with Xoom is relatively easy to do, though it may be a lengthy experience.
Making a transfer
Transferring money with Xoom is fast and easy to do.
Contacting support
Though it does not offer chat support, Xoom offers an extensive FAQ section and its customer service is easy to get in touch with, either by phone or email.
Is Xoom a Good Way To Send Money?
Setting up an account with Xoom is relatively easy to do, and making a transfer, whether to a new or existing contact, is straightforward, with an impressive variety of pay-in and pay-out methods from which to choose.
What is Xoom?
Xoom is a leading money transfer provider to send money from the United States, Canada, and Europe (Eurozone, non-Euro zone countries, and the UK) to over 130 countries around the world.
You can pay using your bank account, debit, or credit card. Depending on the country you are sending money to, the money can be delivered as cash, deposited in a bank account, airtime top-up. It can also be delivered to the beneficiary’s home address. You can also use Xoom to pay utility bills in 10 countries: Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Jamaica, Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and Vietnam).
What's the Difference Between Xoom and PayPal?
Xoom is owned by PayPal and its services are integrated. Because Xoom is part of PayPal, you can use a PayPal-linked bank account, credit card, or debit card, but note that you can't out of your PayPal balance.
Xoom offers mobile apps for Apple iOS and Google Android and their website is available in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, French, Hungarian, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Korean, and Chinese. You are kept informed of the status of your transfer with text updates or email notifications.
How Long Does It Take To Receive Money From Xoom?
If you fund your international money transfer by bank transfer, it can take two to three business days to reach the recipient. Transfer time will also lengthen if a non-traditional transfer route is used. Transfers from the United States to Canada or Mexico, for example, will usually take a day or so while less-common transfers from Mexico to Bangladesh, for example, can take three or more days.
Transfers by debit card, credit card or PayPal balance are usually immediate, taking just a few minutes to reach your destination.
Documents Required for a Xoom Account and Payment Limit
The maximum amount you’re allowed to send with Xoom is $2,999 per day in the US. Without providing documents, you also have a limit of $6,000 per month and $9,999 over a six month period.
You can increase these limits by providing additional documents. US residents need to provide the following:
- ID (passport, driver’s license, etc.);
- Green Card;
- Proof of Income (payslip);
- Bank Statement.
When increasing your limits, Xoom customer service will also ask you to answer a few security questions about your transfer, such as your relationship with the recipient, why you’re transferring money, if you’re sending money on behalf of someone else, and your current occupation.
Send Money to Mexico With Xoom
Xoom allows you to send money to more than 37,000 agent locations (including Walmart, Farmacias Guadalajara, OXXO, Soriana, and Elektra, and directly to someone's bank account at all major Mexican banks including Banca Azteca, BBVA Bancomer, BanCopeel, Banorte, and BanCoppel).
You can also top up the airtime for your friends and family with five carriers (Claro, Telcel, Movistar, Iusacell, Nextel, and Unefon) and even pay utility bills from several companies (dish, gasNatural, Iusacell, IZZF, Sky, Telmex, and Telnor).
Send Money to Colombia With Xoom
You can send money to almost every Colombian city, including Cali, Bogota, Medellin, and Cartagena, in cash or directly to a bank account. Transfers are available to all major banks in Colombia (including Bancolombia, HSBC, BBVA and Banco Popular) and their partner networks (including Carulla, Exito, Davivienda, and Pagos Internacionales). More than 2,500 cash pickup locations are available.
Xoom allows you to top-up their mobile phones on the Claro, Moviestar, Tigo, Avantel, or Virgin Mobile networks for small gifts to your friends and family.
Send Money to Guatemala With Xoom
With over 9,500 cash pickup locations, Xoom has Guatemala covered if you want to deliver money in cash. Xoom’s network in Guatemala includes Banrural, Banco Industrial, and even El Gallo más Gallo.
You can also send money to banks in Guatemala, including Banco G&T Continental, Banco Industrial, Banrural, or reload the phones of Moviestar, Claro, and Tigo customers. It is also possible to pay the EEGSA and Energuate bills of your family.
Send Money to the Philippines With Xoom
Many Filipinos use Xoom to send money back to the Philippines. You can send money to over 10,000 pickup locations (many of which are open 24/7), and your money is usually available in just a few minutes. If you send money to a bank account, the delivery is instant for accounts at BDO, Metrobank, Land Bank, and PNB. You can also send money to any other bank account, although the delivery time will be a bit longer. There are no fees if you send over US$200 to a Philippine Peso bank account and pay with a bank account.
The Philippines is one of the only countries where Xoom offers cash delivery directly to your recipient’s home at no additional cost. The money can be delivered in less than six hours if your recipient lives in Manila or roughly 1-2 days in most other provinces.
If you want to send an airtime top-up to reload your recipient’s mobile phone, Xoom allows you to reload numbers from Sun, Smart, SmartBro, and Globe. You can also pay for your family's local utility Smart and PLDT bills.
Send Money to Vietnam With Xoom
You can send US dollars or Vietnamese dong to over 1,700 pickup locations throughout Vietnam in a few minutes. Bank transfers to Vietcombank, Sacombank, DongA, and Vietinbank can generally be done in minutes, and a quick bank transfer can be made to other major banks. You can also arrange for money to be delivered to your recipient’s home – in major cities, this is usually done on the same day, in all other locations.
You can also send airtime to your relatives using Beeline, Mobifone, Vietnamobile, Viettel, and Vinaphone, or pay for their utility bills such as VNPT and EVNHANOI.
Xoom's Mobile App Review
Xoom's mobile app has excellent ratings on Apple's App Store (4.8/5 stars on 781.4K ratings) and Google's Play Store (4.7/5 on over 150K ratings). With the Xoom app, it’s easy to send money from your smartphone in a few taps. The app is available in English, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Fees & Exchange Rates
Transfers to a bank account
Seldom the cheapest or most competitive on Monito for transfers to bank accounts.
Transfers to cash pickup
Seldom the cheapest or most competitive on Monito for transfers to cash pick-up locations.
Xoom's Fees & Exchange Rates
Xoom rarely ranks competitively in Monito searches, though it does better with cash pickup transfers from the United States.
Xoom Fees
Xoom's transfer fees vary depending on where you're sending your money from and to, as well as the transfer method involved. In general, fixed fees are not applicable to larger bank transfers (usually above US$1,000) and only affect smaller bank transfers. For example, a US$750 transfer from the US to a bank account in India would incur a US$4.99 fixed fee.
In addition to the fixed fee, Xoom also charges a variable commission (usually between 2.9% and 3.3% of the transaction value) for debit and credit card payments.
Xoom Exchange Rates
The second transfer cost comes in when you're charged the difference between the "real" exchange rate (known as the mid-market exchange rate) and the rate which Xoom decides on. This difference is known as the exchange rate margin, and is expressed as a percentage.
Is Xoom Better Than Western Union?
Xoom's exchange rates hover between 0.4% and 1.5% in general for most currencies, which make them reasonably priced compared to other traditional players on the market and on par with Western Union. Xoom is, on average, more expensive than many other services due to the fact that it charges the above fixed fees and commissions in addition.
Why Is the Xoom Exchange Rate So Low?
Bear in mind that Xoom exchange rates decrease in proportion to the size of the transfer. For example, if you were to send a small transfer of US$500 to India, your exchange rate margin would be around 1.1%. Meanwhile, if you were to send a larger transfer of US$10,000, your exchange rate margin would be only around 0.4% instead.
For these reasons, the experts at Monito highly recommend you compare Xoom to better alternatives in real-time using the Monito comparison engine below:
Compare Xoom's Fees & Exchange Rates to Cheap and Fast Alternatives
Customer Satisfaction
Trustpilot reviews
2.6/5 stars from around 25,000 reviews.
App Store reviews
4.8/5 stars from around 1,000,000 ratings.
Customer Reviews of Xoom
Xoom is popular with users, earning a 4.1 out of 5 star rating on Trustpilot with a high number of positive reviews.
Positive Review Highlights
- Transactions speed is quick;
- Smooth and easy-to-use service;
- Excellent customer service.
Negative Review Highlights
- Sending documents to Xoom for compliance reasons was a hassle;
- Some transfers cancelled days after putting a transaction through;
- High fees and poor exchange rates.
How To Send Money With Xoom
Check Xoom’s Rates
Use Monito's comparison engine to see how Xoom’s fees and exchange rates weigh up against the rest and make sure they are indeed the cheapest option for your international money transfer. There, you'll be able to discover both the cheapest ways to fund your transfer and have the money received.
Set Up Your Transfer
To send money overseas with Xoom, you'll need to visit their website or mobile app and enter the amount of money you'd like to send, and then specify which country you'd like to arrive in.
Log in With PayPal
Next, you'll be redirected to PayPal's login page. If you're already a PayPal user, logging in will be the click of a single button. However, if you need to sign up with PayPal, you'll first need to create a profile using your full name, physical address, mobile phone number, and email address, and then link your bank account — all of which can take up to three working days to complete
Add Your Beneficiary
Once you've signed in with PayPal, you'll be brought back to your transfer on Xoom, where you'll need to add your recipient's full name, physical address, mobile phone number, and banking details.
Review and Pay
In the final step, all you'll need to do is review the details of your transfer (including your details, your beneficiary's, and the exchange rate) and then instruct the payment, which will come directly through the bank account that's linked to your PayPal balance.
Xoom at a Glance
| Category | Monito Score | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
9.1/10 | Backed by PayPal and fully licensed | |
7.0/10 | Signing up takes time; transferring is easy | |
2.3/10 | Comparatively high fees and rates | |
7.8/10 | Poor Trustpilot reviews but good app ratings |
Last updated: 23/06/2021
See How Xoom Compares With Other Money Transfer Services
Learn More About Xoom Money Transfer
Why You Can Trust Us
You’re probably all too familiar with the often outrageous cost of sending money abroad. After facing this frustration themselves back in 2013, Monito co-founders François, Laurent, and Pascal launched a real-time comparison engine to compare the best money transfer services worldwide.
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