Wise
MoneyGram
Western Union
AWire to US dollars
End to end 1 to 5 business days Varies by bank
Expand to read the labels.
Bank wire
Wire to US dollars
A bank transfer in US dollars. Your bank sends a payment message over Swift, the messaging network that banks use, and the money moves between accounts that banks hold with each other. If your bank and the beneficiary’s bank have no account with each other, a correspondent bank holds an account for each.
- Messages
- Swift A cooperative society under Belgian law, owned and controlled by its shareholders, with over 12,500 institutions in more than 200 countries and territories. It carries the message and does not move the money.
- Accounts
- Correspondent banks Hold the accounts the money moves between. UOB names Bank of New York Mellon, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo in New York as its US dollar agents.
- Your bank
- DBS, OCBC or UOB Takes your instruction, sets its fee and its rate, and keeps the SGD you paid.
- US dollars
- Fedwire The US Federal Reserve’s payment system, used where a payment system is involved.
- DBS
- SGD 10 to 120 commission, waived with an exchange, plus SGD 20 cable
- UOB
- SGD 10 to 100 a 1/16% commission, so SGD 10 up to SGD 16,000 and SGD 100 from SGD 160,000, plus cable and agent charges
- Rate margin
- 0.78% to 0.79% at DBS in each of six countries in the World Bank data. UOB and OCBC do not print theirs
- Message
- 10 minutes for most messages
- Money
- 1 to 5 days business days at UOB
- Sender pays
- You all the bank charges, at UOB
- Shared
- Split intermediary and beneficiary bank charges come out of the amount sent
- Beneficiary pays
- Recipient the same charges, taken from the amount sent
Key facts
- A correspondent bank holds deposits owned by other banks and provides payment and other services to them. Two banks with no account with each other use a third as the intermediary.
- Swift carries the message and does not move the money. 86% of Swift payments go direct or through a single intermediary.
- The message is an instruction. The money moves as debits and credits on the accounts the banks hold with each other, as the CPMI’s 2016 report describes.
- US dollars settle on the correspondent’s books, or in Fedwire, the US Federal Reserve’s payment system, where one is used. The SGD you paid stays with your bank.
- The beneficiary’s bank uses the message to find the account to credit. UOB asks senders for the beneficiary’s full name and account number.
- The beneficiary’s bank must confirm to Swift’s GPI Tracker, which lets the sending bank follow the payment, when it credits, holds or sends the payment outside Swift.
- The FATF, which sets global standards against financial crime, revised Recommendation 16 in June 2025, so the sender’s and recipient’s details must travel the whole chain unchanged.
Notes on the earns and pays rows
The commissions are UOB and DBS price lists. DBS’s margin was 0.78% to 0.79% in the six countries the World Bank priced it to, for SGD 260 in the week of 19 to 25 August 2025. UOB’s charge options decide who bears the intermediary and beneficiary bank charges. The banks’ price lists call correspondent bank charges agent bank charges. A dash means that party takes or pays nothing in this route. Lines in italics are assumptions, with the reason underneath.
Not stated (4)
- UOB names its US dollar agents, but DBS and OCBC do not in the pages read, and how many banks sit in a given chain is not stated.
- How the bank funds the US dollars it sells is not published.
- Whether banks settle customer wires one by one or net them between themselves is not stated in the documents read.
- Neither DBS nor UOB prints its exchange rate margin, and OCBC’s outward transfer fees were not found.
