Send money from Egypt to Uganda
Two ways out of Egypt hold up to checking, and Uganda is unusually specific about what your recipient must show to collect. Get both right before you queue.
EGP
UGXWestern 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 Uganda is served, and at what cap, before you commit.
Indicative options · not a live quote
Sending money from Egypt to Uganda
Our live comparison doesn't price Egypt-origin transfers, and everything here 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 Uganda 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 Uganda-specific note | Minutes for cash collection | Visit site |
| Wire in US dollars to the recipient's Ugandan 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 Ugandan 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 Uganda. ALEXBANK lists no destination country at all, and puts its own warning next to the cap: restrictions differ from one country to another. So the channel is settled and the destination is the open question. Uganda, by contrast, is refreshingly specific about the other end, and publishes exactly what your recipient has to show to walk out with the cash.
Why Egypt to Uganda 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 Uganda
We could not find a single source, from Western Union, ALEXBANK, CIB or Banque du Caire, naming Uganda 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 Uganda. Anyone quoting 7,500 at you as a Uganda 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 Uganda is served on the product, and what the cap and payout method are for Uganda specifically.
There's a tempting piece of evidence to warn you off. Cairo Bank Uganda is a subsidiary of Banque du Caire and does list Western Union and MoneyGram among its services. That looks like a connection, but those are third-party services offered to people in Uganda, and the page ties the Egyptian ownership to no payment rail at all. Owning a bank in a country is not a corridor, so we won't present it as one.
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-shilling 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 shillings that actually arrive.
Splitting a transfer rarely pays
Because the wire carries flat SWIFT and correspondent charges, every extra transfer repeats them. Two wires of USD 500 cost meaningfully more than one of USD 1,000. If you are sending regularly, fewer and larger beats frequent and small, as long as it stays inside whatever cap applies.
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.
What your recipient must show to collect it
This is where Uganda is genuinely more informative than most countries, and it's worth passing on, because a transfer that arrives and can't be collected helps nobody. Two rules do most of the work. The receiver must be 18 or over, and above USD 500 Western Union will not pay out without identification at all.
Below that, the accepted documents differ by size. Uganda publishes one list for transfers of 0 to 250 US dollars and a second for those over 250, and the smaller-value list is the broader one. It includes a Makerere University card and an asylum seeker letter, neither of which appears on the higher-value list.
Both lists go well beyond a passport, which matters in a country hosting a large refugee population. A plastic refugee card with a letter of eligibility, or with a family attestation letter where the recipient is the head of the family, is accepted on both. So is a foreign passport carrying a visa or entry stamp.
Two honest caveats. The test question requirement is the one to raise at the counter, because it's something you set up when sending rather than something your recipient can fix later. And the page carrying all of this is undated with a 2022 copyright, and refers to a change made in 2009, so treat it as the published position rather than a guaranteed-current one and confirm the ID rules before your recipient travels to a branch.
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 Uganda
Payments are supervised by the Bank of Uganda under Uganda's National Payment Systems Act.
One point is worth knowing, because it explains why the choice of operator is narrower than you might expect. Under the Bank of Uganda's own 2025 oversight framework, cross-border remittance is a separately licensed activity: delivering inbound remittances in local currency needs prior approval or a licence from the Bank of Uganda, and it's the only service in the framework's list carrying that rider. A firm holding an ordinary payment licence does not automatically get to handle your transfer.
So a provider being licensed in Uganda is not the same as being licensed for this. If you're using anyone other than a household-name operator, that's the question to ask.
What we could not establish about the Ugandan side
Uganda is the thinnest of the countries we looked at for published, checkable detail, and it's more useful to say so than to fill the space.
We could not find primary sources for the mobile-money limits on MTN MoMo or Airtel Money, whether by transaction, by day or by wallet balance. We could not establish how the Uganda Revenue Authority treats a personal or family remittance received from abroad. And we could not confirm how Ugandan banks are addressed for an inbound wire, beyond the fact that Uganda is not an IBAN country.
One warning attaches to that last gap. Uganda's mobile money withdrawal levy is a figure repeated confidently across comparison sites, and we could not stand up its current rate or legal basis from a primary source. A rate that everyone quotes and nobody sources is exactly the sort that goes stale, so ask your recipient what they were actually charged rather than trusting a published number, including ours if we ever add one.
How to actually go about this
Settle three things before you commit. Ask whether Uganda is served, and at what cap, because nobody publishes it. Ask whether the branch takes pounds or wants dollars in your hand, which is the step most likely to stop you. And sort the test question out at the counter, since Uganda wants one and you cannot add it afterwards.
Then brief your recipient properly. They need to be 18 or over, they need the tracking number, and above USD 500 they will not be paid without ID. If they're relying on a refugee card or an asylum seeker letter, check which list it appears on before they travel to a branch, because the accepted documents narrow above USD 250.
Egypt to Uganda 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 Uganda. 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 Uganda confirmed at the branch.
They must be 18 or over, and they need the tracking number, which above USD 250 is the only way the transfer is found. Above USD 500 there is no paying out without identification.
The accepted documents differ by amount. Uganda publishes a broader list for transfers of 0 to 250 US dollars, including a Makerere University card and an asylum seeker letter, and a narrower one above that. A plastic refugee card with a letter of eligibility, or with a family attestation letter where they are the family head, appears on both, as does a foreign passport with a visa or entry stamp.
Western Union's Uganda page says transfers sent to Uganda must include a test question, meaning a question and answer you agree with your recipient that they give at the counter.
Raise it when you send, because it's set up at the sending end and can't easily be added later. Worth flagging that the page stating this is undated and carries a 2022 copyright, so confirm it applies to your transfer rather than assuming.
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. Separately, Uganda's own page gives 7,500 US dollars as a limit for sending from Uganda, which is the opposite direction and not your transfer.
We could not establish it from a primary source, so we won't tell you either way. We found no Uganda Revenue Authority guidance covering how a personal or family remittance received from abroad is treated.
That's a gap in what we know rather than a suggestion there's tax to pay, and it's the sort of question worth putting to a Ugandan accountant rather than to a comparison site. This is general information, not tax advice.
We can't source it, so we won't quote it. Uganda's mobile money withdrawal levy is repeated confidently across comparison sites, and we could not stand up its current rate or its legal basis from a primary source. A figure everyone quotes and nobody sources is exactly the kind that goes stale.
We also could not find published MTN MoMo or Airtel Money limits by transaction, day or wallet balance. Ask your recipient what they were actually charged and what their wallet holds.
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. Because those flat charges repeat on every transfer, one larger wire beats several small ones.
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. Western Union's Uganda page is undated with a 2022 copyright and is cited as the published position, not a guaranteed-current one. The bank tariffs date themselves.
Affiliate disclosure: the "Visit site" link to some providers is an affiliate link. Currency Expert may earn a commission, at no cost to you, if you open an account through it. It never changes which providers we list or the order they appear in.