Amina's missing money isn't a glitch.
It's a global system.
You've seen how the fees work on a single transfer. Now watch the same mechanics play out across millions of real ones — in Amina's corridor, across Africa, and around the world. The World Bank has been tracking every transfer for years. The pattern is consistent.
Banks charge nearly 3× more than mobile apps.
The kind of company you choose changes everything. Commercial banks average 8.3% globally. Mobile operators sit near 3.1% — the only provider type that comes close to the UN's 3% target. Every other type sits well above it.
The names you recognize are the ones charging the most.
On page one we used invented apps to show how fees disappear. Here are the real ones flying Amina's exact route. The cheapest providers — names most people have never heard of — come in around 1%. Western Union and the other household brands sit over 8%. Same sender. Same recipient. Same destination bank. Eight times the cost.
Sub-Saharan Africa pays the highest price on earth.
Zoom out to the whole world and one region stands alone. Sub-Saharan Africa averages 11.5% — almost four times the UN target. Every other region on the planet is closer to 3% than to Africa's number. The system extracts the most from the people who can spare the least.
Two ways to take a cut — and Africa pays both.
The total fee splits into two parts: the explicit fee a provider quotes upfront, and the exchange rate margin — the silent markup hidden in the rate itself. Most regions trade one for the other. Sub-Saharan Africa sits in the top-right corner: highest upfront fee and highest hidden margin. Nowhere else does both at once.
Where you send from dictates the price.
Amina sends from London — at 4.9%, one of the cheaper routes into Kenya. Now look at Tanzania → Kenya, an intra-African corridor: 20.98%. The instinct that sending money within Africa should be cheaper than sending it from Europe turns out to be exactly backwards. Distance isn't the problem. Competition is.