The world’s top 10 remittance recipients
Merchant Machine conducted a study to analyse which countries send and receive the most money and the average prices for UK remittances, in order to predict how remittances will look in 2025.
With so many political and economic changes over the past decade, what is the future of remittances going to look like? What is going to change for the biggest spenders and receivers?
Combining a linear trend and an exponential growth trend, we analysed how the rankings of both senders and receivers of remittances will change in the short term.
The top 10 biggest receivers:
| RANKING | COUNTRY | AVERAGE INWARD REMITTANCE FLOWS (US$ MILLION) |
| 1 | India | 71,757 |
| 2 | China | 62,552 |
| 3 | Philippines | 30,071 |
| 4 | Mexico | 29,951 |
| 5 | France | 24,657 |
| 6 | Egypt | 21,452 |
| 7 | Nigeria | 21,065 |
| 8 | Pakistan | 18,667 |
| 9 | Germany | 16,297 |
| 10 | Bangladesh | 15,310 |
According to the study, India, China and the Philippines will have the highest average inward remittance flows. India’s inward remittance flow is predicted to increase by 9%, China’s by 14.3% and the Philippines by 24%. Belgium rank 15th in the top 20 biggest receivers list and is the only country that will experience a possible decrease of -1.3% in its inward remittance forecast.
The UK ranks 51/194 among countries with the highest prediction, with a -2.8% decrease in inward remittance flow.
Biggest senders predicted for 2025
According to the research conducted by Merchant Machine, the UAE will have the highest percentage increase in outward remittances in 2025 at 71.6%, followed by Poland at 70.7% and China at 60.2%. Outward remittances in the Russian Federation are going to see a drop in 2025, with a percentage decrease of -23%, declining from $16.8 to $12.9 billion. The UK outward remittances in 2025 are going to increase by just 4.1%, the smallest increase amongst the countries in the table above.
| OUTWARD REMITTANCE FLOWS (US$ MILLION) | 2020 (US$ MILLION) | 2025 (US$ MILLION) | % INCREASE OF OUTWARD REMITTANCES IN 4 YEARS |
| United States | 68,000 | 82,345.70 | 21% |
| United Arab Emirates | 43,240 | 74,233.40 | 71.60% |
| Saudi Arabia | 34,596 | 37,577.90 | 8.60% |
| Switzerland | 27,965 | 30,945.10 | 10.60% |
| China | 18,121 | 29,045.30 | 60.20% |
| Germany | 22,024 | 28,162.50 | 27.80% |
| Netherlands | 13,923 | 16,496.70 | 18.40% |
| France | 15,038 | 16,428.30 | 9.20% |
| Luxembourg | 14,203 | 15,341.90 | 8.00% |
| Kuwait | N/A | 14,650.10 | N/A |
The full research can be found here: https://merchantmachine.co.uk/remittance-flows/
