Sending money to Kenya

Broadly four:

Your Korean bank's own remittance service. Reliable, integrated with your account, generally the slowest and often not the cheapest. Good for large amounts where you want a clean paper trail.

Dedicated remittance operators licensed in Korea. Several operate specifically for the foreign-worker market. Usually cheaper and faster than banks. Check they are actually licensed — the Financial Supervisory Service maintains the list.

International money transfer services. The familiar global names operate here. Convenient, coverage into Kenya is good, cost varies.

Mobile-money-linked services. Some routes deliver directly to M-Pesa. For household support this is often the most useful endpoint, since the money arrives where it is actually spent.

Which is best genuinely depends on amount, urgency, and where it needs to land. Nobody wins on all three.

The advertised fee is the smaller half of the cost. The exchange rate margin is the larger half, and it is where providers compete least visibly.

Work it out properly: how many Kenyan shillings actually arrive, for a fixed number of won, after everything. That single number is the only honest comparison. A zero-fee transfer at a poor rate routinely delivers less than a transfer with a visible fee at a fair one.

Do this comparison once, properly, for the amount you typically send. Then re-check every few months — the market moves.

Korea has reporting requirements on outward transfers above certain thresholds, and your bank may ask for proof of the source of funds — payslips, a contract, a tax certificate.

This is routine, not suspicion. Keep your payslips. If you send a regular amount from a salary that lands in the same account, this rarely becomes an issue. If you send an unusual lump sum, expect questions and have the paperwork ready.

Also be aware of what arrives on the Kenyan side — thresholds and treatment there are a separate matter, and worth confirming with KRA rather than assuming.

The KRW/KES rate moves, and for regular senders those movements add up over a year. You do not need to trade currencies — but if you are sending a large one-off amount and it is not urgent, glancing at the rate over a week or two costs nothing.

For monthly household support, consistency beats optimisation. Pick a good provider, send on a predictable date, and let the averaging work itself out.