Send money from Egypt to Ghana
Two ways out of Egypt hold up to checking, and one Ghanaian tax you have probably read about no longer exists. Both are worth knowing before you queue.
EGP
GHSWestern Union sends out of Egypt through ALEXBANK, and CIB and Banque du Caire both price a personal wire abroad. None of them publishes which countries you can send to, and ALEXBANK warns that restrictions differ by country. Confirm Ghana is served, and at what cap, before you commit.
Indicative options · not a live quote
Sending money from Egypt to Ghana
Our live comparison doesn't price Egypt-origin transfers, and everything on this route happens at a bank counter rather than in an app. Two channels stand up to checking. Western Union runs an outward service through ALEXBANK, a bank licensed by the Central Bank of Egypt, across 163 branches, and you don't necessarily need an account. CIB and Banque du Caire each publish a personal tariff for a foreign-currency wire abroad.
The gap worth knowing about is reach. No source we could find names Ghana as a destination for a transfer starting in Egypt. That doesn't mean it's closed, it means nobody publishes it, so ask before you pay.
| Provider | Payout method | Speed | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | The beneficiary collects cash at a Western Union agent in the destination country, or receives it into a bank account there; ALEXBANK publishes no Ghana-specific note | Minutes for cash collection | Visit site |
| Wire in US dollars to the recipient's Ghanaian bank, addressed with a SWIFT code and account number | Not published in the tariff; ask the branch | Visit site | |
| Wire in foreign currency to the recipient's Ghanaian bank | Value date 2 working days, per its own schedule | Visit site |
Money does leave Egypt, and the channels have names. Western Union over an ALEXBANK counter, or a wire from CIB or Banque du Caire at prices those banks publish themselves. What none of them says is Ghana. ALEXBANK lists no destination country at all, and puts its own warning next to the cap: restrictions differ from one country to another. Treat the channel as settled and the destination as the open question. Better news waits at the Ghanaian end, where the transfer tax most people have heard about was repealed in 2025.
Why Egypt to Ghana shows no live prices
Our live comparison prices transfers that start in the UK and a handful of other major sending countries, where the providers we connect to operate. Egypt is not among them, and there's no app race to compare here in any case.
Western Union doesn't serve an online sending flow for Egypt either. Its Egyptian send page returns a 404, and the pricing configuration on its own Egypt site leaves Egypt out of the countries with a web quote. What follows is what the operators and banks publish about themselves, and what they leave out.
The two ways money leaves Egypt
One channel is Western Union at an ALEXBANK branch. ALEXBANK is owned by Intesa Sanpaolo and licensed by the Central Bank of Egypt, and it publishes a sending section on its own site, separate from the section on receiving.
Holding a bank account is not necessarily required, in its wording, and it serves walk-in customers as well as its own. That matters, because it's the only channel here that doesn't start with opening an account.
The other is an ordinary SWIFT wire from a bank where you already hold an account. Both CIB and Banque du Caire publish a personal tariff for sending foreign currency abroad, which is firmer evidence than a marketing page. A bank that prints a price for a product is selling that product.
Worth naming what is not here. MoneyGram is widely assumed to send out of Egypt, and we couldn't evidence it. Banque Misr's own MoneyGram page describes money arriving to Egypt and being cashed at its branches, and Banque du Caire treats MoneyGram as a United States agent feeding money in. Neither publishes a sending offer the way ALEXBANK does for Western Union, so we leave it off rather than assume.
The part nobody will tell you: whether it reaches Ghana
We could not find a single source, from Western Union, ALEXBANK, CIB or Banque du Caire, naming Ghana as a country you can send to from Egypt. ALEXBANK publishes no destination list at all.
What it offers instead is a network figure, more than 640,000 agent locations across 200 countries, and then undercuts any inference from it with a parenthetical of its own: restrictions and special notes differ from one country to another.
That parenthetical sits directly beside the USD 7,500 cap, which makes the cap a ceiling subject to country rules ALEXBANK doesn't publish rather than an amount you're guaranteed to be allowed to send to Ghana. Anyone quoting 7,500 at you as a Ghana allowance is reading more into it than the page says.
None of that means the corridor is shut, and we won't claim it is. It means destination rules live behind the counter rather than on the website. Ask whether Ghana is served on the product, and what the cap and payout method are for Ghana specifically, before you commit.
One trap to sidestep. Western Union's own Egypt page shows USD 5,000 under a heading reading 'Sending from Egypt'. That figure is a cash payout ceiling for money collected in Egypt, not a limit on sending out, as the bullets underneath make plain by describing collection in Cairo. That page still carries a 2022 copyright while the rest of Western Union's country sites have moved on.
What it really costs
The wire is the channel where you can see the price before you walk in, because both banks publish it. The Western Union counter doesn't work that way, so the rate quoted on the day is the only number that counts.
The wire has three charges, not one
CIB's tariff dated 8 June 2026 prices a foreign-currency transfer order at 0.3%, with a floor of USD 20 and a cap of USD 150, then adds USD 20 in SWIFT charges and USD 35 in correspondent charges. Banque du Caire charges 3 per mille, floor USD 20 and ceiling USD 200, plus USD 15 SWIFT. On a small transfer the flat charges dominate and the percentage barely matters.
The exchange-rate margin
Neither the banks nor Western Union publish a pound-to-cedi tariff, and the margin folded into the rate is usually the biggest cost on a transfer of any size. It hides well, because it reaches you as a rate rather than as a charge. Ask for the rate and the fee as separate numbers, and judge the options on the cedis that actually arrive.
The day matters as much as the operator
The cedi floats, so its value against the dollar moves. On a route where you cannot lock a rate in advance, cannot compare quotes online and cannot see a price until you are at the counter, when you go is doing real work. If the transfer is not urgent, watch the rate for a week before committing to a day.
The dollar problem, and why we can't wave it away
ALEXBANK's page says something short and consequential about the Western Union channel: for outward transfers, it accepts only US dollar currency. The wire channel points the same way, since both bank tariffs price the product in dollars and charge in dollars.
What the page doesn't settle is whether you must hand over dollars at the counter, or whether the branch takes your pounds and sends dollars. That distinction decides how straightforward your day is, and we won't guess at it. Ask it plainly at the branch.
It matters because of the thing we could not verify. Buying dollars in Egypt is permitted, and since the currency was floated and the official and parallel rates converged, the official position is that foreign exchange is available to everyone at the same rate.
That's a statement about policy, not about your branch on the day. We found no date-stamped evidence from 2025 or 2026, in a bank notice, a central bank circular or contemporaneous reporting, showing what an ordinary walk-in customer actually gets. Test the dollars first, before the paperwork.
Rules on each side
Sending from Egypt
At the Western Union counter you show a national ID, passport or military ID, every time. Above USD 2,000, ALEXBANK asks for a purpose and a supporting document only if you can't show a clear relationship to the person receiving, and separately requires non-Egyptian customers to evidence the source of the funds.
Those are Western Union product rules, not banking law, and they don't tell you what CIB or Banque du Caire want for a wire. We couldn't find either bank's requirements broken down by purpose, so if you're sending for tuition or medical costs, ask the branch what it expects before you make the trip.
On cash in your luggage, the UK government's advice is that you can carry no more than EGP 5,000 in or out, and that foreign currency above USD 10,000 must be declared on arrival. The rules for taking it out are less clearly stated, so ask customs.
Receiving in Ghana
Payments and anti-money-laundering are supervised by the Bank of Ghana together with the Financial Intelligence Centre, under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2020 (Act 1044).
Expect questions earlier than you might think. For a cross-border transfer of USD 1,000 or more, or the cedi equivalent, the Ghanaian institution paying the money out must verify the beneficiary's identity. That's a low threshold, and it's a duty on the institution rather than a charge on your recipient.
On tax, a family remittance sits outside Ghana's gift-tax net. The Revenue Authority treats money, including foreign currency, as a gift asset in principle, but gifts from a spouse, child, parent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, nephew or niece are exempt. Worth being straight about the basis: the Authority never mentions remittances on that page, so this is the general rule applied rather than a statement about transfers from abroad. Ignore any source quoting gift tax at 15% above GH¢50, which belongs to a repealed law.
The E-Levy is gone, whatever you have read
If you've researched sending money to Ghana before, you'll have met the Electronic Transfer Levy, introduced in 2022 at 1.5% and later cut to 1%. It was repealed on 2 April 2025, when the President signed the bill scrapping it alongside the betting tax and the emissions levy. There is no E-Levy to plan around.
This is worth spelling out, because the stale figure is unusually well entrenched. The Ghana Revenue Authority's own FAQ page still describes the levy in the present tense and still gives the rate as 1%, carrying no repeal notice. The Authority contradicts itself across its own website, and the out-of-date page is the one that tends to surface in a search.
One thing not to confuse it with. In May 2026 a 0.75% charge on moving money from a mobile-money wallet to a bank account was announced, then suspended by the Bank of Ghana before it was due to start. That was a commercial fee set by operators rather than a tax, and it never took effect. Anyone describing it as the E-Levy returning has merged two separate things.
If it lands in a mobile-money wallet
Mobile money is where most Ghanaians keep everyday money, so it's the likeliest destination if the operator offers it. The Bank of Ghana runs wallets on a three-tier know-your-customer structure it names Minimum, Medium and Enhanced. Which tier your recipient sits on decides what their wallet can hold and take in.
Here we'd rather admit a gap than fill it. We could not find a Bank of Ghana notice publishing the actual customer wallet limits for those tiers. Figures do circulate, but they trace back to news reporting rather than to a published notice.
There's a trap in the one Bank of Ghana document that does put cedi figures next to those tier names: it covers merchant accounts, which is a different thing that reads deceptively like a customer limit. We won't repeat those figures as wallet limits, and neither should anything else you read.
The practical move is to ask your recipient which tier their wallet is on and what it can hold, before you send. If the amount is large, a bank account sidesteps the question.
How to actually go about this
Settle two things before you pick a channel. Ask whether Ghana is served, and at what cap and payout method, because nobody publishes it and it decides everything. Then ask whether the branch takes pounds or wants dollars in your hand, which is the step most likely to stop you.
If both answers work, Western Union at an ALEXBANK counter is the lower-friction option for a modest sum, since you don't necessarily need an account. For anything larger, a CIB or Banque du Caire wire has a published price you can check before you go, though the flat charges make it poor value on small amounts. Judge either on the cedis that arrive, and ignore any calculator still deducting an E-Levy.
Egypt to Ghana transfers: frequently asked questions
We can't promise it, and we'd rather say so. Sending out of Egypt is evidenced, in that Western Union runs an outward service through ALEXBANK, and CIB and Banque du Caire both publish tariffs for a personal wire abroad.
What no source names is Ghana. ALEXBANK publishes no destination list and warns that restrictions differ from one country to another. That's an absence of published information rather than evidence the route is closed, so get Ghana confirmed at the branch.
No. Ghana's Electronic Transfer Levy was repealed on 2 April 2025, when the President signed the bill scrapping it alongside the betting tax and the emissions levy.
Be careful what you read, though. The Ghana Revenue Authority's own FAQ page still describes the levy in the present tense at 1%, with no repeal notice, so a stale figure is easy to land on. A separate 0.75% wallet-to-bank charge announced in May 2026 was suspended before it started, and was a commercial fee rather than a tax.
That figure is on Western Union's Egypt page, but it's a cash payout ceiling for money collected in Egypt, not a limit on sending out. The bullets under it describe collecting money in Cairo, which only makes sense for money arriving.
The send-side figure is different and comes from ALEXBANK: up to USD 7,500 per transaction, qualified by ALEXBANK itself as subject to country restrictions it doesn't publish. That Western Union page also still carries a 2022 copyright.
A family remittance sits outside gift tax. The Revenue Authority treats money, including foreign currency, as a gift asset in principle, but exempts gifts from a spouse, child, parent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, nephew or niece.
Two honest caveats. The Authority never mentions remittances or transfers from abroad on that page, so this is the general rule applied rather than a statement about your transfer. And ignore any source quoting gift tax at 15% on value above GH¢50, which belongs to a repealed law. This is general information, not tax advice.
Because the threshold is lower than most people expect. For a cross-border transfer of USD 1,000 or more, or the cedi equivalent, the Ghanaian institution paying it out has to verify the beneficiary's identity. That comes from the Bank of Ghana and Financial Intelligence Centre guideline made under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2020.
It's a duty on the institution rather than a charge on your recipient, and it applies to any licensed institution making the funds available, not only banks.
We can't tell you honestly, so we won't. The Bank of Ghana runs wallets on three know-your-customer tiers it calls Minimum, Medium and Enhanced, but we could find no Bank of Ghana notice publishing the customer limits attached to them.
Figures circulate online and trace back to news reporting rather than a published notice, and the one Bank of Ghana document putting cedi figures beside those tier names covers merchant accounts, which is a different thing. Ask your recipient which tier they're on, or send to a bank account if the sum is large.
CIB's own tariff dated 8 June 2026 prices a foreign-currency transfer order at 0.3%, minimum USD 20 and maximum USD 150, plus USD 20 SWIFT charges and USD 35 correspondent charges.
Banque du Caire's schedule, self-dated 21 May 2026, charges 3 per mille, minimum USD 20 and maximum USD 200, plus USD 15 SWIFT charges, with a value date of 2 working days. The flat charges are what hurt on a small transfer, and neither figure includes the margin inside the exchange rate.
Our sources & how we keep this current
Last reviewed: 16 July 2026. Most operator pages here carry no revision date, so figures drawn from them are what the operator published as at 16 July 2026 rather than dated facts. The bank tariffs and the E-Levy repeal are the exception and date themselves. Caps, charges and the destinations each channel serves all drift, so confirm them before you send.
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