Remittance costs are meant to fall below 3 percent by 2030 under UN target 10.c, a goal set by the UN, measured by the World Bank and left to national authorities — sending 200 US dollars averaged 6.5 percent in first-quarter 2025 data

What is happening?

Sustainable Development Goal target 10.c commits the world, by 2030, to two things at once: to bring the transaction cost of migrant remittances below 3 percent of the amount sent, and to eliminate remittance corridors costing more than 5 percent. The Global Compact for Migration, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 2018-12-19, repeats the same two numbers in its Objective 20 and asks for a roadmap to reach them.

The indicator that tracks the first half, SDG 10.c.1, is the global average total cost of sending 200 US dollars, expressed as a share of the amount sent. Its data source is the World Bank database Remittance Prices Worldwide, published quarterly.

In the most recent figures opened for this dossier, the Financial Stability Board progress report published on 2025-10-09 gives that global average as 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2023, 6.4 percent in the first quarter of 2024 and 6.5 percent in the first quarter of 2025. The FSB itself classifies movements within 0.4 percentage points as stable, so this dossier does not describe that series as a rise. What it records is the distance between 6.5 percent measured and below 3 percent written.

The target was written by one body, is measured by another, and depends for its delivery on the payment systems, market rules and compliance regimes of individual countries. The FSB report states that jurisdictional implementation of its policy recommendations is nascent, and that the international bodies coordinating the work do not operate payment systems themselves.

Whose problem is this?

No opened document names a body that is obliged to deliver the 3 percent figure. The Global Compact is described by the International Organization for Migration as a non-legally binding cooperative framework, and the FSB report states on its imprint page that it creates no binding legal rights or obligations.

Where does this problem end?

The dossier stays on the distance between a written number and a measured number, because both of those are public and neither depends on a judgement made here. The adjacent value questions about taxing, restricting or policing money transfers are named above so that they are visibly left outside rather than silently answered.

What is the state now, and what should it be?

Now

Should be

The target state is written in the UN text itself: by 2030, an average transaction cost below 3 percent, and no corridor costing more than 5 percent. Objective 20 of the Global Compact for Migration restates both figures and the same year. This is the target of the UN itself, not one supplied here.

Two cautions sit on the table above. The corridor share measure is the FSB proxy, counting corridors where even the three cheapest services average above 5 percent, which is not the same yardstick as the corridor cost wording in target 10.c. And the SmaRT figures describe what a well-informed sender who shops for the cheapest option could pay, not what senders on average do pay; this dossier sets the two averages side by side and does not turn their difference into a ratio.

How big is it?

A UN background page on remittances gives 685 billion US dollars sent to low- and middle-income countries in 2024, from over 200 million migrants to 800 million family members, with a typical monthly transfer of 200 to 300 US dollars. The page does not give a base year for the two head counts.

The people inside the problem are therefore somewhere between the senders alone, over 200 million, and senders plus receiving families, about one billion. The population file sets out that interval and its limits.

This dossier does not compute a total amount paid in fees. The 6.5 percent figure is a corridor average for a 200 dollar transfer, the weighting behind that average is not described in the opened documents, and the 685 billion figure is a different population of flows in a different year. Multiplying the two would produce a number that no source supports.

Under what conditions does it arise?

1. The target has no single owner. The UN set the numbers, the World Bank measures prices, the FSB reports to the G20, and the instruments that move prices, such as access to payment systems, market regulation and compliance rules, belong to national authorities. The FSB report states that it and the standard setters it works with do not operate payment systems themselves.

2. The frameworks carrying the target are not binding. The Global Compact for Migration is described by the International Organization for Migration as a non-legally binding cooperative framework, and the FSB report says it creates no binding obligations. The opened sources contain no sentence assigning the 3 percent figure to a specific obligated party.

3. Implementation happens country by country and is early. The FSB summary describes jurisdictional implementation of its legal, regulatory and supervisory recommendations as nascent, and says most roadmap actions have not yet translated into tangible improvements for end users.

4. The measurement sees only part of each corridor. Remittance Prices Worldwide records prices from the main sending location to the capital or most populous city of the receiving country, so what rural recipients pay is outside the measured figure.

What has been tried?

The G20 timetable that the FSB judges unlikely to be met runs to the end of 2027 and covers the whole cross-border payments roadmap. The remittance target in the UN text runs to 2030. This dossier keeps the two dates apart because no opened source gives an institutional forecast for the 2030 figure itself.

What was found?

Why is it still unsolved?

Coordination failure — the target, the measurement and the means of delivery sit with different bodies, and the two frameworks whose legal character the opened sources describe, the Global Compact and the FSB work, are non-binding.

The UN wrote a precise number and a date. The World Bank measures prices every quarter, and the FSB converts those prices into indicators that it reports to the G20 every year. Each of those steps works as designed, and the measured average has not come close to the written number. What none of them does is change a price, because prices are set in markets governed by national payment and supervisory rules that sit outside all three bodies.

The FSB describes national implementation of its recommendations as nascent, leaving delivery to national authorities, and the International Organization for Migration describes the Global Compact that restates the target as non-binding. So the arrangement produces careful measurement of a gap, and the opened documents contain no sentence naming a party that must close it. The legal character of target 10.c itself is not stated in any opened source.

The FSB has published its own account of why progress is slow. Its 2025 summary lists long lead times for infrastructure and technology, misaligned anti-money laundering and compliance controls and privacy rules, inefficient implementation of capital controls, limited transparency for end users, interoperability problems and insufficient competition in some market segments. For one Sub-Saharan African corridor it says that high costs seem to come from heavy reliance on US dollar cash, weak competition, lack of direct access to payment systems for non-bank providers and burdensome reporting requirements. Those are the conclusions of the FSB, reported here with its own hedging, and this dossier does not add a diagnosis of its own.

What observation would mean it is solved?

Candidates — (a) the SDG 10.c.1 global average for sending 200 US dollars falls below 3 percent (b) no measured corridor costs more than 5 percent (c) a named body takes on the obligation to reach the target, with a published roadmap and reporting against it.

(a) alone is not enough. The target has two halves. An average can fall below 3 percent while a set of expensive corridors, concentrated in particular receiving regions, stays above 5 percent. The average is also measured only for transfers to capitals or the most populous city, so it can improve without reaching recipients elsewhere.

(b) is not currently measured on its own terms. The opened SDG indicator page defines one indicator, the average. The FSB corridor measure counts corridors where the three cheapest services exceed 5 percent, which is a proxy for the wording of the target, not the same test.

(c) alone changes paper, not prices. A roadmap with an owner would close the coordination gap described in this dossier, but only a measured fall in cost shows that senders pay less. The three have to be read together, and each value has to be read against the quarter it describes.

What is it connected to?

Fills with researchother objectives of the Global Compact for Migration, including the recording of migrant deaths, the wider G20 cross-border payments roadmap, anti-money laundering standards and financial inclusion policy were not traced in this round. Relation type and evidence grade were not confirmed.

What these sources do not say

• Values after the first quarter of 2025. The Remittance Prices Worldwide site and its quarterly reports returned HTTP 403 to automated fetches and were not bypassed. A report for the third quarter of 2025 exists, and its values are absent from this dossier. Every figure here is tied to its quarter rather than described as current.
• How the global average is weighted. The FSB methodology document describes weighting for retail payment indicators but not for the remittance average.
• How the cost splits between fees and exchange rate margins. The FSB tables that break down cost components cover retail cross-border payments other than remittances.
• The total amount senders pay. No opened source gives a global sum of fees paid.
• An institutional forecast for 2030. The FSB judgement of unlikely progress refers to the 2027 roadmap timetable, not to the 2030 remittance target.
• A separate indicator for the 5 percent half of the target. The opened indicator page defines only the average.
• Whether the Objective 20 roadmap exists. The full agreed text of the Compact could not be opened, as its host failed a DNS lookup, and no other opened source reports on the roadmap.
• What recipients outside capitals and major cities pay. The database does not price those transfers.
• Whether the 685 billion dollar figure counts only recorded flows. The UN page does not say.
• A base year for the 200 million and 800 million head counts. The UN page does not give one.
• Comparisons that do not hold. The World Bank figure of 6.4 percent is for the fourth quarter of 2023, while the FSB figure of 6.4 percent is for the first quarter of 2024. The Sub-Saharan Africa figures of 7.9 percent from the World Bank in 2024 and 8.8 percent from the FSB in 2025 use different bases, sending to the region against receiving in it, and are not a trend.
• Positions of individual countries or providers. The published position found is that of the FSB, set out in the section on why the problem persists. No opened source records a response from a national authority, and none is attributed here.

See the evidence

Evidence tier is secondary. The FSB report and methodology document, the UNECE indicator page, the UN implementation guidance extract, the IOM page, the UN background page and the World Bank press release were opened directly. The underlying World Bank price database and its quarterly reports could not be opened, so every price figure here comes from the FSB report that republishes it, which cites Remittance Prices Worldwide for the first quarters of 2023, 2024 and 2025. Where figures from different quarters or bases coincide or differ, they are kept apart rather than joined into a trend. This is a Path A output (research-based definition), so observation_refs is empty and provenance_mode: press-derived.

People affected

Estimated range 200,000,000–1,000,000,000 As of undated head counts; same page reports 2024 flows

Sensitivity The interval runs from senders only to senders plus receiving families, and is not a confidence interval. Both counts come from one UN background page that states no base year and no counting method, so they cannot be dated precisely. The upper bound could be too high if some people are counted both as senders and as recipients, and too low because the sender figure is stated as a minimum. The counts measure people exposed to remittance costs, not the amount they pay: no opened source gives a total of fees paid, and multiplying the 6.5 percent average for a 200 dollar transfer in the first quarter of 2025 by the 685 billion dollar flow of 2024 would join two figures that describe different populations, periods and weightings.

Regional breakdown The source page gives only global totals for senders and recipients. The FSB report gives regional cost averages but no regional counts of people. Splitting the global head counts by population share would be proportional allocation, and remittance sending and receiving are concentrated along particular corridors rather than spread with population.