A case study of the international money transfer market

I recently took on the challenge of understanding why 96% of Americans that send money internationally are unhappy with their money transfer provider and 80% say they feel ripped off by their provider. That leaves 4% happy. Babies on a plane give higher satisfaction ratings.

I work for finder.com a personal finance comparison website that includes comparing cross-border payment services. We aim to help make decisions easier and more satisfying. I had to get to the bottom of this.

Because people need to get their funds where they need to go, their frustrations do not stop them from using these services. The U.S. money transfer market is an estimated $141 billion industry annually. That’s more than half of what was borrowed for mortgages ($231 billion) and more than student loans and credit card debt combined ($124 billion) last year, according to a finder.com analysis of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Center for Microeconomic Data.

Turns out this dissatisfaction with such a massive industry could be related to user experience. And not because it is done poorly, but because it works too well.

We often call this a “dark pattern”. The term was coined by user experience designer Harry Brignull to describe interfaces that intentionally use human psychology against our own interests. That’s a recipe that could certainly lead people to feeling “ripped off”.

What led us to suspect user experience was the culprit?

To better understand the frustrations and mindsets of money transfer senders, we identified five areas of importance to those sending money across borders:

User experience Rates Transfer speed Convenience — including number of features, transfer options and countries Trust and credibility

With a detailed methodology, we assessed these factors by conducting usability testing with UserTesting.com, sending live transfers, generating 2,430 quotes, and verifying over 585 data points collected from provider websites.

As we performed our research, the anxiety of choosing the right provider became apparent due to the overwhelming choices and the pressure of wanting as much of your money to arrive on time. We needed to recognize what providers were doing well to cut through the noise.

We awarded those that rose to the top with the first finder.com Money Transfer Awards. The five consumer considerations ended up being the basis for our award categories: Best User Experience, Best Transfer Rates, Best Transfer Speed, Most Convenient, and Outstanding Product (presented to providers who perform well overall). From the data collected, we tallied a score for each category per provider to determine if they were a winner.

To give context to these scores, we calculated category averages. These were the results: