Send money to South Africa from the UK the easy way

As soon as we have received a copy of your passport and proof of residential address (signed and dated by yourself), we will activate your account on the same business day. If your transfer exceeds £20,000, we will request a few additional documents.

Whether you’re sending a remittance or settling debt, the quickest and most convenient way to convert your money and transfer out of the UK would be online, with your UK debit card. All you have to do is charge your card on our website and, when you submit your transfer, your exchange rate will be locked in automatically. This ensures the rate you see is the rate you get.

We can send money to South African credit cards only. At present, we cannot transfer money to Australian, New Zealand or UK credit cards.

Once we have received all the necessary documentation associated with the transaction and your funds have cleared in our client account, the converted funds will be credited to your nominated overseas account within one to three working days.

To get you the best rates, we canvass the market on your behalf, add a small margin to the rates we obtain and pass that rate on to you. The exchange rates we offer fall between the interbank rate (the truest exchange rate) and the rate offered by high street banks and bureaux de change.

We are able to undercut the high street banks and pass that saving on to you in the form of great rates. Do note though, while the rates on our site are updated throughout the day, they must be viewed as indicative only.

There is no minimum or maximum amount when you transfer money with us. There are, however, certain benefits to sending larger amounts.

Please note: When transferring £10,000 (or foreign currency equivalent) or more in a single currency transaction, or £30,000 (or foreign currency equivalent) in a number of transactions over a 12-month rolling period, Sable International requires proof of “source of funds” as prescribed by HMRC’s Money Laundering Regulations.

There are several limits on sending money out of South Africa but there are no limits as to how much money you can send into South Africa. If you’d like to learn about how much money can be transferred out of the republic, check out our page on discretionary allowances.

Not at all. Our transfers carry a small swift fee of R250. When the funds clear in your recipient account the intermediary and receiving bank may charge a bank fee to depending on whom you bank with and this is generally £15, alternatively we charge R200 to ensure all potential receiving and intermediary charges are covered upfront.

Our fees are dependent on the size and destination of your transfer. Although you’ll be glad to know that any transfer above £2,000 (excluding transfers out of South Africa) is automatically processed free of charge. If you are transferring less than £2,000, the table has some general information on our fee structures.

Fees to transfer from the UK

Remember, these are simply our most popular destinations; we can transfer to others, so if yours isn’t on the list, please contact us.

If you are using internet banking, it is imperative that you ensure that your funds will clear under your name and surname. If you use your name and surname as the payment reference, we will know that the funds are from you and we can process your transfer as soon as the funds clear.

If the funds will be clearing under a reference other than your own name and surname, please send an email to forex@sableinternational.com, informing us as to what name the funds should clear under. Following these guidelines will decrease the likelihood of a delay.

Our site uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) 128-bit encryption to protect your transaction details. This 128-bit encryption is the latest and strongest data encryption technique commercially available for securing information between you, our client, and our website.

SSL works by encrypting/scrambling data from our website to your computer. The data is encrypted on our web server and can only be decrypted/unscrambled by the person with the correct decrypt/unscramble key. You can visually verify our site’s use of SSL in two places: The "s" in https in the site’s web address and by the padlock on the left-hand side of the address bar.

Our forex service is registered with all of the relevant authorities globally. Sable International is a trading name of Sable International FX Limited (company number 07070528), registered in England and Wales.

We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK (FCA no. 517570) and the Financial Services Conduct Authority in South Africa (Sable International FX [PTY] Limited - FSP no. 41900).

We are registered as a Money Services Business with FinCEN in the USA (1st Contact Money Ltd/1st Contact Money Ltd - registration no. 31000174356061).

We meet the required capital and liquidity requirements required by prudential regulation. We also stand under the financial controls and KYC (Know Your Customer) policies and procedures of our corporate bankers and regulatory institutions.

As an FCA Authorised Payment Institution it is our responsibility to segregate funds. Where we are required to segregate your funds. We do this by placing the funds in a segregated account (known as a "safeguarding account") at Barclays Bank PLC.

We are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Instead, where we have segregated your funds in a safeguarding account, it means those funds would be separated from our other assets in the event of our insolvency and used to repay you and other clients.

Barclays Bank PLC provides us with safeguarding account(s) but does not monitor the funds we place in them or how we operate these accounts.

The funds of clients who utilise our Currency Solved service, backed by Currencycloud, are safeguarded by their FCA-regulated e-money partners at a credit institution.