Today's cheapest money transfer service might not be the cheapest tomorrow. Find the one that's best-suited to your needs and preference by comparing the best performers on Monito's comparison engine over the past 30 days for transfers from the UK to India:

How to Transfer Money From the UK to India

For millions of NRIs, keeping currency exchange fees as low as possible is a top priority when they look to send money from the UK to India. The good news is this is easy to do through Monito's comparison tools and handy how-to guides. You'll be able to see which options are available to you and take advantage of the quickest, simplest and most secure ways to transfer money from the UK to India.

When comparing your options, you must assess precisely which transfer method best matches your needs. For example, wire transfers with traditional banks can be slow and expensive, while other options might not offer the best fees, exchange rates, or fastest transfer speeds.

If you're feeling a little overwhelmed about the choices available, look at the overview below to learn more about how to send money from the UK to India through bank deposits and cash pickups.

Bank Transfers From the UK to India

One of the most popular ways to send money to India from the UK is to carry out a wire transfer from your bank account in the UK to an account in India. Wire transfers take place over the SWIFT network, an international funds transfer protocol allowing banks worldwide to exchange money with one another. You can read more about wire transfers in our guide. 

But while many high street banks prefer this method, the major drawback is that the SWIFT network charges banks to use it. Much of this cost is then passed on to the customer, making wire transfers rather expensive. On top of this, they can also be very slow.

For this reason, you may prefer to carry out an ordinary bank transfer to an international money transfer specialist's local bank account. These services are much faster but just as secure as the banks. Moreover, the overall cost is significantly reduced because they don't rely on the SWIFT network. 

Sending Very Large Bank Transfers from the UK to India

Should you wish to send a substantial sum of money, say more than £50,000, from the UK to an Indian bank account, you will generally be better off using a foreign exchange broker. 

Foreign exchange brokers offer similar services to your standard money transfer and remittance services, but they specialise in large transfers and can negotiate more competitive exchange rates on behalf of the client.

Taxation When Sending Money to India From the UK

While sending money to India from the UK, one of the key things to consider is taxes. The best and tax-free way to do a bank transfer to India is to send the money to an NRE (Non-Resident External) account, an account used to deposit income earned outside India. Indian banks like Canara Bank and HDFC Bank offer one of the highest interest rates on NRE savings accounts.

There is a wide range of international money transfer services that you can choose from to get your money across to an NRE account. Monito’s comparison tool comparing the best services for transferring funds to a bank account in India will make this task much easier, which shows you the best and cheapest services in real time. What’s even better is once you have chosen your best-suited bank transfer service, you can go straight to the transfer option on the service website through the tool, saving you time.

Cash Pickup Transfers from the UK to India

Another option worth considering when sending money from the UK to India is a cash pickup. These services allow the transfer recipient to collect their funds in cash from a physical location in India rather than having them deposited electronically into their bank account. 

We recommend using our comparison engine every time you transfer money from the UK to India to ensure you always get the best possible deal. This applies no matter how much or how little you want to send or which receiving method you choose. By doing so, you'll be able to determine which services are the quickest, most reliable, and cheapest:

What’s the Best Way To Send Money to India From the UK?

The ‘best’ way to send money to India from the UK will depend on whether speed, security or cost is most important to you – or whether it’s a combination of all three. 

When it comes to security, you can rest assured that all services shown on Monito are fully authorised money transfer operators that have been vetted against the highest standards of security and reputability even before appearing on our comparison engine. 

Just remember that while all services are equally secure on Monito, they won’t all be as cheap or as fast as each other when transferring money from the UK to India. 

Best-Rated Services

When comparing your options, you’ll also come across the ‘Monito score’. As part of our in-depth reviews, we weigh up factors such as trust and credibility, service and quality, fees and exchange rates, and customer satisfaction to give each service a score out of 10.

Some of the highest-scoring services include the following:

• Wise (9.5/10)
• TransferGo (9.3/10)
• Remitly (9.1/10)
• PaySend (8.2/10)

The Fastest Way to Send Money to India From the UK

Also, as they say, time is expensive. So saving time can be equally important to the sender or the recipient, especially in emergencies. Monito does not only compare the cheapest service, it also pulls out data to accurately show how soon your money will reach India.

If you’re carrying out a bank transfer from the UK to India, Panda Remit trumps in terms of speed. In fact, transferred funds will arrive in the recipient’s account in just a few minutes. Also, the amount received by the recipient will be the highest compared to other services.

Alternatively, XE and Remitly also offer some of the fastest transfers from the UK to India, with transfers being carried out in a matter of minutes or hours. Remitly is especially good if you're looking for cash pickup. It offers the speediest and cheapest services with most of the transferred amount going through the same day.

For Monito's top tips for sending money abroad quickly, check out our how-to guide here.

The Cheapest Way to Send Money to India From the UK

Let's look at the most expensive solutions: Banks, cash-based money transfers and e-wallets like Paypal are in general really expensive when you take all fees into consideration (incl. hidden currency exchange rate margin). Thankfully, there are plenty of online money transfer services with transparent & cheap fees and good exchange rates. You can compare them all and find the cheapest way to send money to India from the UK with Monito.