Panda Remit Review: Fees, Safety, Alternatives, and More

Yes, Panda Remit is a safe and secure transfer platform you can trust to send your money quickly, safely, and cheaply.

Panda Remit is a Hong Kong-based money transfer company with all the requisite licensing and authorisation from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and AUSTRAC in Australia. This makes it a completely legitimate company adhering to global standards and regulations on financial security, including separated user accounts.

Aside from its legal and regulatory status, Panda Remit is a highly secure platform that adheres to the latest security protocols on the internet, such as secure servers, HTTPS, and more. It also runs on NortonLifeLock cybersecurity software, meaning its information security is on par with most banks around the globe.

Moreover, two of the world's largest and most-reputable venture capital funds — Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed — are chief investors in the company.

The only reason we didn't score Panda Remit higher in this section is that it's (1) a relatively young company with a small corporate size and (2) it isn't transparent about making money on the exchange rate, instead remaining ambiguous on its homepage about whether or not the exchange rate displayed is the same as the actual mid-market exchange rate (more on this in the Fees section later).

Panda Remit is a good provider for sending money abroad, and in our tests, although we found the app to be somewhat dated and difficult to use at times, it was still easy enough to do the two most important things: sending money and tracking the status of the transfer.

With Panda Remit, you can quickly and reliably send money from 20 currencies (including all the major ones) to 21 others around the globe, especially in European and Asian markets. Interestingly, Panda Remit is one of the few money transfer platforms supporting transfers to CNY in China and NPR to Nepal. However, it doesn't support transfers to a few major currencies, most notably the USD and BRL.

Speed is one of the most significant selling points of Panda Remit. Indeed, according to its website, most transfers arrive within minutes of being sent, as long as the transfer is sent on a weekday during business hours. This makes Panda Remit one of the fastest ways to send money abroad, on par with Wise and Remitly.

Panda Remit supports transfers by bank transfer and debit card and pays out funds to foreign bank accounts as a local deposit and, in China, as Alipay or Weixin deposits.

Panda Remit is a very cheap way to send money worldwide, charging no transaction fees and only charging a small exchange rate markup on some transfers.

For most international transfer platforms and banks, when you send money internationally, you'll be charged two types of fees: (1) either a fixed or commission-based transaction fee and (2) an exchange rate margin. However, when you send money internationally with Panda Remit, you'll only be charged the second type of fee, which means you'll be offered a slightly worse exchange rate than the 'real' mid-market exchange rate (with Panda Remit keeping the difference as a fee for its service) and no standard fees.

At Panda Remit, the exchange rate margin is usually between 0.2% and 2% of the total transfer amount, with some transfers coming with no margin. This means that for a EUR 1,000 transfer, you'll pay around EUR 2 to EUR 20 in total fees, depending on the transfer countries and amounts involved. This is much cheaper than the bank, which typically charges between EUR 30 and EUR 90 in total fees for a similar transfer.

Here are Panda Remit's approximate costs for various corridors for a similar-sized transfer of around USD 1,000: