By: Samira Batalha, Head of Communications at PTX Group
When a worker in the United States sends money to family abroad, the price on the screen is rarely the full price paid. The gap between the advertised fee and the true cost of a transfer remains one of the most persistent problems in consumer finance, says Darley Tomaz, founder and CEO of PTX Group, a financial services company serving immigrant entrepreneurs across 15 U.S. states.
“People compare fees because fees are visible,” Tomaz says. “The fee is often the smallest part of what you pay. The real cost lives in the exchange rate, and most senders never see it.”
The mechanics are simple once exposed. A remittance provider earns revenue in two ways: the explicit transfer fee, and the margin built into the exchange rate offered to the customer. A service advertising a low fee, or none at all, may apply a rate meaningfully weaker than the mid-market rate that banks use between themselves. On a large transfer, that spread can quietly exceed the fee several times over.
Global data confirms the scale of the problem. The World Bank, which tracks remittance pricing worldwide, has consistently reported that sending money costs the average sender more than six percent of the amount transferred. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals set a target of three percent. For a community that sends billions of dollars home every year, the distance between those two numbers represents value that never reaches the families it was earned for.
Tomaz worked in fraud prevention in Brazil’s financial sector before immigrating, and he does not consider the opacity accidental. “Any market where the customer cannot see the real price is a market that rewards confusion,” he says. “Comparing providers honestly has always required effort most people don’t have time for.”
His practical guidance comes down to one question. If I send this exact amount today, how much arrives on the other side, in local currency, after everything? That single number collapses fees, exchange margins, and any intermediary costs into a figure anyone can compare across providers. In Tomaz’s view, a provider that cannot answer it clearly is already answering it.
Timing matters more than most senders realize. Rates between the dollar and currencies like the Brazilian real or the Mexican peso move every day, and the difference between a strong week and a weak one can outweigh any fee. Tomaz is emphatic that nobody can predict rates, and that senders should distrust anyone who claims otherwise. What a sender with flexible timing can do is simpler: avoid transferring on an unfavorable day out of pure habit.
The last piece is documentation. For business owners especially, clear records of international transfers support clean accounting and demonstrate the legitimate origin and destination of funds. His fraud prevention background makes Tomaz insistent on this point. “Transparency protects the sender,” he notes. “The same clarity that shows you the real cost also builds your financial history.”
These principles shaped PTX Exchange, the transfer platform PTX Group launched for its community of more than 2,000 clients, with active corridors to Brazil and Mexico. The platform’s core commitment, Tomaz says, is that the sender sees the complete picture before confirming anything: the rate applied and the exact amount arriving on the other side.
He frames the issue as larger than any single company, his own included. Financial literacy around remittances works like a community asset. Every sender who learns to compare total costs pushes the whole market toward transparency, and every dollar recovered from a hidden spread is a dollar that reaches a family, pays a tuition bill or seeds a small business back home.
“The money is already earned. The work is already done,” Tomaz says. “The only question is how much of it survives the journey.”
