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ICICI Money2India: The Ultimate Money Transfer Review

Byron Mühlberg, writer at Monito.com
Sep 15, 2022
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ICICI Bank's very own remittance service, Money2India offers bank transfers from the US, UK, Canada, UAE, or Singapore to India at some of the best exchange rates available on the market. However, the platform is usually far from the cheapest of all and its service can be fairly limiting for some.

Take a look at Monito's in-depth review of Money2India to determine whether the service makes sense for you.

Monito's Independent Review of ICICI Money2India

Money2India is an online money transfer service powered by ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank serving over one-and-a-half million non-resident Indian customers around the globe. It offers transfers to Indian rupees from US, Canadian, and Singaporean dollars as well as United Arab Emirates dirhams and British pounds, and transfers can be made as bank deposits to any bank account in India.

The service is all-around a very cheap and fast alternative to the bank itself, particularly for larger transfers or for transfers from the UAE. However, for smaller transfers or transfers from the US, UK, Singapore, or Canada; ICICI is neither the fastest nor the cheapest option out there, and our recommendation is to compare the market before making a transfer.

📣 Money2India is only available for transfers from the US, UK, Singapore, Canada, and the UAE. You can still use ICICI Bank for transfers to India from other countries, but these will need to be wire transfers, which tend to be more pricey. See our reviews of ICICI Bank in the UK and Canada for more information.

What Monito Likes About money2India (ICICI Bank)

  • Secure transfers operated by ICICI Bank;
  • Sign-up is open to everybody and not restricted to ICICI Bank customers;
  • Attractive exchange rates, especially for larger transfer amounts;
  • Transfers to businesses are available.

What Monito Dislikes About money2India (ICICI Bank)

  • Only 5 available sending countries, downscaled from 9;
  • Service charges make transfers to under ₹45,000 fairly expensive;
  • Web and mobile apps don't offer a top-notch user experience;
  • Exchange rates are usually poorer for smaller transfers;

ICICI Money2India at a Glance

ICICI Money2India Fees & Exchange Rates

One of the cheapest services for sending money to India, ICICI Money2India varies in terms of the competitiveness of its fees and exchange rates depending on the amount sent and the destination. All in all however, Money2India is a very cheap service compared to making a standard wire transfer from one bank account to another.

The fees you'll pay to send money abroad with ICICI Money2India can vary. For smaller transfers (i.e. the equivalent of about ₹45,000 or less), there's usually a fixed fee or a commission (both referred to as "service charges") that go along with the transfer. Next to this, there's also a rather low exchange rate margin on every unit of currency you convert into Indian rupees. When it comes to exchange rates, you'll be asked to choose one of the following:

Money2India Fixed Exchange Rate: This exchange rate is locked-in or confirmed at the time of the initiation of your transfer, and you specify the amount in Indian rupees that you want your recipient to receive.

Money2India Indicative Exchange Rate: For indicative exchange rates, the effective exchange rate applied to your transfer will be the Money2India’s exchange rate at the time and hour of the effective conversion of your money. 

All in all, these fixed fees and exchange rate margins can be broken down as follows:

All things considered, these fees and exchange rates leave Money2India as one of the cheapest services of all to NRIs wishing to send money home. Specifically for transfers from the UAE to India, ICICI Money2India frequently outcompetes even the cheapest money transfer services for this corridor, such as Skrill.

However, for transfers from the US, UK, Singapore, and Canada to India, Money2India lags behind even cheaper services such as Remitly, Wise, and Ria, which were the cheapest services for transfers from these countries to India on a combined 57% of searches on Monito's comparison engine between March 2020 and March 2021.

To get a better picture of how Money2India's pricing works, take a look at how these fees and exchange rates translate into real-life transfer examples (based on exchange rates from 29/03/2021 at 12:45 GMT +02:00):

Compare the market to save up to 95% in fees to India

Service & Quality

While an attractive service in terms of pricing, ICICI Money2India offers a rather narrow range of services that don't cater to everybody. For example, international money transfers are only possible using a bank transfer (i.e. moving money from one bank account to another), with alternative pay-in methods such as debit or credit card transfers and pay-out methods such as cash pick-up not being available.

What's more, as we touched on above, Money2India is only available for international money transfers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates to India. Other countries, such as Australia and those in the European Union, have seen their services discontinued.

All this being said, however, Money2India very much excels at the (albeit small) range of transfers it offers. Transfers are made quickly, usually within four business days and often as quickly as two, and customers enjoy a high level of confidence in the service and security that their money is in good hands.

Another point that counts in Money2India's favour is that customers don't need to have an account with ICICI Bank in order to sign up. Money2India is widely available to NRIs living abroad, and can transfer money to pretty much any registered and authorized bank in India, as well as to business bank accounts.

Another aspect we particularly like about ICICI Money2India specifically concerns transfers from the USA, from which you can send money from your checking or savings bank account to India using Money2India’s Express e-Transfer and e-Transfer features. Using e-Transfer, for example, your beneficiary will receive their money within an hour for ICICI Bank customers or within two hours for all other Indian banks.

Customer Satisfaction

Money2India has generally earned mixed reviews from its customers, even after it recently updated its web and mobile apps. Customers frequently report the following:

👍🏻 Fast and courteous customer service;

👍🏻 Very competitive exchange rates;

👎🏻 Transfers can take longer than 4 days;

👎🏻 Poorly-designed web and mobile apps;

Credibility & Security

Aside from being backed by India's largest consumer bank, Money2India can be labelled a reputable and secure service for the following reasons:

✅ Segregated user accounts and 128-bit SSL;

✅ Advanced firewall protection;

Two-factor authentication sign-in;

✅ Handled over 3B transactions to date.

Is ICICI Money2India Right For You?

An all-around reliable choice for transfers to India, we recommend ICICI Money2India if you're already a happy customer of their service or if you're sending money to India from the UAE, in particular. This is because the fees and exchange rates are comparatively very good between the UAE dirham and the Indian rupee, and usually the best on the market.

However, when it comes to transfers from the US, UK, Singapore, or Canada, ICICI is outpaced by a large group of considerably more competitive money transfer services, and you could be making fairly large savings by making the switch (particularly when it comes to smaller transfer amounts where Money2India's service charges have a big impact on the final amount received.)

As such, to weigh up your options and discover the best deal in real-time, be sure to run a search on Monito's comparison engine below:

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