Sending Money Abroad from Austria (2026)

Which Route Does Your Money Actually Take?

Table mapping Austrian outbound payment corridors to the rail each one uses, from euro SEPA to Turkey, Serbia, India and the Philippines, with the fee consequence per rail. As of August 2026.

Pick the route by corridor, not by brand. A transfer to Germany and a transfer to Serbia are different products even though your banking app shows one button for both. Inside the euro area your transfer rides SEPA and costs €0. Outside it, the money either crosses SWIFT through correspondent banks or lands with a local payout partner, and those two paths differ by a factor of ten on the same amount.

The middle case catches people out. Poland, Hungary and Romania are inside the EU but outside the euro, so a euro SEPA transfer arrives cheaply and then the receiving bank converts it at whatever rate it likes. Sending PLN, HUF or RON through a fintech at the mid-market rate is almost always cheaper than letting somebody else choose the rate.

How Much Does It Cost to Send €500 or €1,000 Abroad?

Sending €500

Sending €1,000

Tables comparing the cost of sending €500 and €1,000 from Austria across 18 corridors including Germany, Turkey, Serbia, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, India, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States, priced for Wise, Revolut, Remitly, Paysend, Western Union and an Austrian bank SWIFT transfer. Every figure is the cheapest online variant paying out to a bank account, funded by SEPA bank transfer, as of 28 August 2026. Values marked indicative come from a provider calculator on the date shown and move daily. “Not published” means the provider quotes that route only in a live calculator, so no figure is stated here. Verify in the provider’s own calculator before you send.

Read the tables by row, not by column. For euro SEPA corridors the answer is €0 from your own bank and every alternative is worse: Remitly charges 1.76% plus €1.99 on euro routes, which is €10.79 on €500 and €19.59 on €1,000 for a transfer your bank does for nothing.

On the remittance corridors the spread is brutal. €1,000 to Turkey costs about €12.50 through Wise, €1.99 plus margin through Remitly, and roughly €65 through an Austrian bank on SWIFT. Serbia and Bosnia run €50 to €70 by bank against €7 to €10 through Wise. The bank route is not slightly worse, it is five to ten times the price and takes 3 to 10 business days.

Two columns need a caveat. Revolut shows €0 on many rows because the Standard plan includes €1,000 of mid-market exchange a month: send more than that, or send at the weekend, and the price changes. The Wise figures for Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia are interpolated from its published route band of 0.43% to 1.1%, so treat them as indicative and check the live quote.

What Is the Exchange-Rate Margin and Why Does It Hide the Price?

The margin is the gap between the rate a provider quotes you and the mid-market rate, and it never shows up as a fee. Ria displayed 55.00 TRY per euro in its calculator on 2 September 2026. If the mid-market rate that day was 56.10 TRY, the margin cost about 2%, which is €20 on a €1,000 transfer. No line item said €20.

The check takes thirty seconds. Look up the mid-market rate for your currency pair, then read the rate the provider quotes in its calculator. Divide the difference by the mid-market rate to get the margin as a percentage, and multiply by your amount. Headline fee plus margin is the real price, and a provider that advertises €0 and quotes a rate 2% below mid-market is more expensive than one charging €6 at the mid-market rate.

Bank transfers hide a second cost. On the default SHA charge option, correspondent banks along the SWIFT chain deduct €15 to €30, so €1,000 can arrive as about €950 with nothing on your statement to explain it. The OUR option shifts every charge to you so the full amount arrives, and Erste Bank charges €21.87 for it on transfers up to €5,500.

Which Provider Is Cheapest for Your Corridor?

Wise Europe SA, Belgium

Wise

4.6

Cheapest to a Bank Account. Charges the mid-market rate with the fee shown before you send, from 0.43% of the amount, the cheapest transparent route to a bank account.

Send money with Wise

Not for you if: Anyone whose receiver needs cash over a counter, because Wise pays out only to a bank account or card.

Transfer fee (Best)

From 0.43% + €0.45 to €1.66

Exchange rate

Mid-market, no markup

€1,000 to the USA

€6.21

€1,000 to the UK

€5.76

Cash pickup

None

More details

€1,000 to Turkey

About €12.50 (1.1% + €1.66)

Weekend surcharge

None

Speed

Minutes to 2 business days, 60% instant per Wise

In-account conversion

From about 0.47% per currency pair

Card

€7 one-time

ATM

2 withdrawals to €250 a month free, then 2.69% + €0.80

Protection

Safeguarding, no deposit-guarantee scheme

Complaints

Wise support, then Ombudsfin in Belgium

Figures as of August 2026, calculator values dated 5 March 2026. Verify on wise.com before sending.

Key information

Eligibility

No Austrian address needed

Fees

From 0.43%, mid-market rate

Protection

Safeguarding, no deposit guarantee

Support

In-app and email, English

Best for People sending to a receiver who has a bank account and who want the total cost visible before they press send

Revolut Bank UAB, Lithuania

Revolut

4.1

Free Inside the Monthly Limit. Converts up to €1,000 a month at the mid-market rate for nothing on a weekday, which beats every fee-charging rival on a one-off transfer.

Send money with Revolut

Not for you if: Anyone sending more than €1,000 a month or sending at the weekend, when the surcharge wipes out the saving.

Currency exchange (Best)

Free to €1,000 a month (Standard)

Above the limit

0.5% fair-use markup

Weekend surcharge

0.5% to 1%

€1,000 to Turkey, weekend

€9.97

Deposit guarantee

Lithuania, to €100,000

More details

Paid plans

Plus €3.99, Premium €9.99, Metal €16.99, Ultra €55 a month

ATM

€200 a month free on Standard, then 2%

Speed

Instant between Revolut accounts, 1 to 5 business days on SWIFT

Account opening

Minutes, no KSV1870 credit check

Exotic currencies

Higher surcharge on rarely traded pairs

Interest tax

KESt on account interest is not withheld, you declare it on E1kv

Complaints

Revolut support, then Bank of Lithuania; the Austrian ombudsman is not competent

Figures as of August 2026, calculator values dated 5 March 2026. Verify on revolut.com before sending.

Key information

Eligibility

Opens from abroad in minutes

Fees

Weekend markup, 0.5% to 1%

Protection

Bank licence, not e-money

Support

Chat only, no phone line

Best for People sending one transfer a month on a weekday, inside the €1,000 free exchange limit

Remitly, Irish EU entity

Remitly

4.3

Best for Cash Pickup. Charges a flat €1.99 on the Austria to Turkey route and pays out as cash or to a bank in 175+ countries, with a delivery guarantee.

Send money with Remitly

Not for you if: Euro SEPA transfers, where its 1.76% plus €1.99 charges €10.79 for what your bank does for nothing.

Austria to Turkey (Best)

€1.99 flat

Austria to the USA

€2.99

Euro routes

1.76% + €1.99

Exchange-rate margin

0.5% to 3%, inside the rate

Payout

Cash pickup and bank, 175+ countries

More details

North Macedonia, euro route

€6.99 under €300, €8.99 for €300 to €599.99, €15.99 for €1,000 to €1,999.99

Speed

Express in minutes by card, Economy 1 to 2 business days

First transfer

Promotional rate on the first €1,000 for new customers

Delivery guarantee

Fee refunded when a transfer arrives late

Licence

Central Bank of Ireland, e-money, safeguarding

Provider price pages, April 2025 for the Turkey route and 2026 for the rest. Verify on remitly.com before sending.

Key information

Eligibility

ID only above a threshold

Fees

Margin hidden in the rate

Protection

Fee refunded when late

Support

Support in 18 languages

Best for People sending to Turkey, the Philippines, India or the Balkans, especially when the receiver wants cash

Western Union International Bank GmbH, Vienna

Western Union

3.7

Best for Cash in Minutes. The one route that hands a receiver with no bank account cash in minutes at 500,000+ agent locations, paid for with a rate margin.

Send cash with Western Union

Not for you if: Regular monthly transfers to a bank account, where the rate margin makes it several times the price of a fintech.

Online to a bank, Turkey

From €0.90

Cash in, cash out

Up to €11.90 and above

Exchange-rate margin

1% to 3%, €10 to €30 per €1,000

Real cost, €1,000 cash to cash

€25 to €40

Payout speed (Best)

Cash in minutes

More details

Online limit

€5,000 a day

Bank payout

1 to 3 business days

Card funding

Your card issuer may add a cash-advance fee

Licence

Western Union International Bank GmbH, Vienna, supervised by the FMA

Complaints

Member of the Austrian banking ombudsman scheme

Special corridors

Afghanistan listed for Austrian senders, price only in the live calculator

Provider pages and calculator comparisons, March 2025 to August 2026. Verify in the live calculator before sending.

Key information

Eligibility

No account needed, ID only

Fees

1% to 3% rate margin

Protection

No recall after cash pickup

Support

German and English, agent network

Best for Emergencies, and receivers with no bank account in rural Serbia, Bosnia or Kosovo

Paysend, Ireland and the UK

Paysend

4.3

Best Card-to-Card. Sends straight to the receiver's Visa or Mastercard for about €1.50 flat, so you never need to ask them for an IBAN.

Send money with Paysend

Not for you if: Anyone comparing on total cost alone, because the 1% to 2% inside the rate outweighs the flat fee on larger amounts.

Card-to-card fee (Best)

About €1.50 flat

Bank transfers

€0 fixed fee on many routes

Exchange-rate margin

About 1% to 2%, inside the rate

Countries

170+

Speed

Card in minutes, bank 1 to 3 business days

More details

Real cost per €1,000

€10 to €20 sits in the rate

Receiver needs

A card number, not an IBAN

Limits

Low until you complete full verification

Licence

Central Bank of Ireland and UK FCA, safeguarding

Calculator values dated 17 May 2026. Verify on paysend.com before sending.

Key information

Eligibility

Receiver needs only a card

Fees

1% to 2% inside the rate

Protection

Safeguarding, no deposit guarantee

Support

App in German and English

Best for Senders whose receiver has a payment card but will not share bank details

Erste Bank and Sparkassen, Bank Austria, Raiffeisen

Your Austrian bank, by SWIFT

3.3

Best for Proof of Payment. The only route that produces a SWIFT record and an OUR charge option, which is what authorities and courts accept as proof that you paid.

See Austrian bank accounts

Not for you if: Family support and everyday remittances, where it costs five to ten times a fintech transfer.

Erste Bank, non-SEPA online

€13.50 up to €5,500, then 0.20%

Bank Austria

€16 to €5,000, €32 to €10,000

Currency conversion (Bank Austria)

0.3%, minimum €4

€1,000 to Turkey, all-in

About €65

Speed

3 to 10 business days

Deposit guarantee (Best)

Einlagensicherung AUSTRIA, €100,000

More details

Correspondent banks (SHA, BEN)

€15 to €30 deducted along the way

Erste, OUR option

€21.87 up to €5,500

Erste, USD charge

€10.50

Erste, express

€7.76 online, €14.35 in branch

Erste, cancellation

€34

Erste, in branch

€11.53 to €13.50 and above

Bank Austria, USD or CAD

€8

Rarely traded currencies

€7

Erste Bank price list dated 2 February 2025, Bank Austria notice dated July 2023, Turkey total from press research dated 27 May 2026.

Key information

Eligibility

Your existing Austrian account

Fees

€13.50 to €32 plus margin

Protection

SWIFT record, OUR option

Support

No total cost before sending

Best for Payments that need documentary proof, such as a court, a tax office or a property purchase

Two more names belong on the list without a price. Ria Money Transfer, part of the Euronet group, covers 190+ countries including Kosovo, North Macedonia and Bosnia, waives the fee on your first transfer with its published promo code, and caps you at €10,000 per transfer and €25,000 per 365 days for the rest of Europe. Its per-corridor fees at €500 and €1,000 exist only in its live calculator, so no figure is stated here.

MoneyGram runs the second-largest cash-pickup network after Western Union and is available in Austria online and through agents. It publishes no dated fee table for Austria, only a live calculator, so every price you read about it elsewhere is unverified. Treat both the same way: open the calculator, note the fee and the quoted rate, and compare the amount that actually arrives.

Wise or Revolut: Which One Wins Which Transfer?

Wise prices from its calculator on 5 March 2026; the Turkey formula dates from an older calculator reading and is indicative. Revolut terms from its Standard plan as of August 2026.

Revolut wins the small, regular transfer. Up to €1,000 a month of currency exchange runs at the mid-market rate for €0 on the free Standard plan, so €1,000 to the UK on a Tuesday costs nothing, against €5.76 at Wise. It also holds money in a licensed bank, so your balance sits under the Lithuanian deposit guarantee up to €100,000, and the account and the card live in the same app.

Wise wins everything else: amounts above the monthly allowance, any transfer sent on a Saturday or Sunday, and anyone who wants the exact amount guaranteed before pressing send. The common mistake runs the other way round. Wise is an e-money institution, not a bank: client money is safeguarded, held apart from Wise’s own funds, but no deposit-guarantee scheme pays out if it fails, so treat a Wise balance as money in transit rather than savings.

Can You Send Money to Syria or Afghanistan from Austria?

Afghanistan yes, through Western Union, which ran an active Afghanistan page for Austrian senders when this was checked in August 2026. The fee appears only in its live calculator, so no published figure exists and any number quoted elsewhere is unverified. Wise, Revolut, Remitly and Paysend do not list Afghanistan as a destination at all.

Syria is harder. No regular online route from Austria could be confirmed in 2026: Western Union does not list Syria in its prominent corridor selection the way it lists Afghanistan, and Austrian banks decline Syria payments on compliance grounds. Whether individual money-transfer counters still serve the corridor is unverified, so check with the operator directly rather than trusting a third-party list.

Is an Instant Euro Transfer Free at Austrian Banks?

Table of SEPA Instant availability, fee and daily limit at Erste Bank and Sparkassen, Bank Austria, BAWAG and easybank, Raiffeisen, Volksbank, Oberbank, BKS, BTV, bank99 and the neobanks N26, Revolut, bunq, Trade Republic and Wise. As of August 2026. Raiffeisen limits are set per regional bank and are not published centrally.

Yes. Since 9 October 2025 an instant euro transfer may not cost more than a standard one, so wherever your online transfer is free, instant is free too. 97% of Austrian providers take part in the instant scheme. Some Austrian banks charged €0.30 to €0.55 per instant transfer before the rule landed, Bank Austria among them, and those charges are no longer lawful where the standard transfer is free. If your bank still bills you, complain to the FMA.

The same date brought Verification of Payee: your bank now checks the name you typed against the name on the IBAN and answers match, close match or no match. A close match can be waved through. A no match should stop you, because it is the signal that catches an invoice with a swapped IBAN. The complaint that arrived with the feature is warning fatigue: the check also fires on perfectly correct transfers, and readers learn to click past it.

How Do You Send Money Home Every Month?

For a euro destination, set up a Dauerauftrag, a standing order, in your banking app. It is free to create, change and stop online at every Austrian bank. Doing the same thing at an Erste Bank counter costs €3.96, the same charge that applies to a counter cash transaction or a paper Zahlschein, where branch payment slips run €3 to €7 each.

For a non-euro destination, the monthly pattern changes which provider wins. Revolut is free only inside €1,000 of mid-market exchange a month, so a recurring €500 transfer is free and a recurring €1,200 one is not. Wise charges from 0.43% every time but has no weekend surcharge and no monthly ceiling, which makes it the steadier choice for a standing commitment. Remitly keeps its flat €1.99 on the Turkey route whatever the amount, but its promotional rate covers only the first €1,000.

Two rails people reach for and should not. PayPal is free for euro person-to-person payments across the EU, but the Friends and Family option carries no buyer protection, which is precisely why fraudsters ask for it, and its currency conversion adds 3% to 4%. A SEPA direct debit you granted can be reversed for 8 weeks without giving a reason and for 13 months if it was never authorised, but a failed direct debit costs you €5 to €7.50 at your own bank and another €3 to €8.75 plus reminder charges at the other end, so a bounced monthly payment lands at €8 to €20.

A year of €300 monthly transfers to Turkey costs anything from €0 to well over €162, depending on the route and the day. Revolut on a weekday is free because €300 sits inside the monthly allowance. Remitly is cheap or dear depending on a margin you only see in the quoted rate, between €41.88 and €131.88 a year. Wise lands at about €59.52 with the price fixed before you send, and the house bank costs at least €162 in fees before its exchange-rate margin is even counted.

What Has Gone Wrong at Transfer Providers Since 2024?

None of these incidents makes either provider unsafe to use, but each one changes how you should use it. A review freeze is the realistic risk for a newcomer: it tends to fire when documents change, such as a new residence permit, or when a large sum arrives from an unfamiliar source. Keep your current residence title and a payslip or contract ready to upload, and do not route a property deposit or a rent payment due tomorrow through an account you opened last week.

Readers holding a Russian or Belarusian passport should keep their main salary account at an Austrian bank, whose duty to offer a basic payment account under the VZKG gives a domestic fallback that an app based in Lithuania does not. The second lesson comes from the receiving end: a cheap sending fee says nothing about what the receiving bank deducts, which is why a small test transfer is worth its cost on a new corridor.

Who Pays When a Transfer Turns Out to Be Fraud?

It turns on one question: did you approve the payment? For an unauthorised payment, your bank must refund the amount without delay and restore the account (§ 67 ZaDiG 2018), and your own liability before you report a lost or stolen payment instrument is capped at €50 under § 68 Abs. 1 ZaDiG 2018. For a payment you approved yourself, which is what almost every scam produces, there is no statutory refund right at all. Your only route is a damages claim for a breach of duty by the bank, typically failed fraud monitoring.

The €50 cap falls away if you acted with gross negligence, and the bank has to prove it. The bank must also show that strong customer authentication worked properly. Report a disputed debit immediately and in any case within 13 months of it appearing on your statement (§ 65 ZaDiG 2018), or the claim lapses.

Two rulings mark the boundary. In 7 Ob 95/24g the OGH found gross negligence where a customer handed over credentials after a phishing SMS and then approved every transaction himself: full liability, and no duty on the bank to block authorised transactions while its monitoring looked plausible. In April 2026 the OLG Linz split a loss 50:50 after a fake bank call moved €200,000 in 41 transfers inside 90 minutes, because the bank’s fraud monitoring never triggered and professional social engineering is not gross negligence by the victim.

Practice has moved with those rulings. Gross negligence is no longer assumed from a single click. The questions that decide it are how professional the forgery was, whether you were under sustained pressure, whether a layperson could have spotted it, and whether your device clearly displayed the IBAN and the amount you were approving. Reading a TAN down the phone while the screen showed a stranger’s IBAN is gross negligence. Deception with no visible discrepancy is slight negligence, and then the bank pays in full.

The numbers say how common this is. The BKA Cyber Crime Report 2025 counted 31,001 internet-fraud cases, down 2.4% from 31,768 in 2024, inside 63,459 cybercrime offences overall, with investment fraud alone costing around €120 million. The banking ombudsman handled 831 payments cases and 242 phishing cases in 2025. The 2025 phishing report puts the average loss at €4,333.38 per case across 4.3 misused payments, of which 63% were card cases and 28% transfers, averaging €8,513.82 per SEPA transfer, and 77% of cases had at least one payee abroad.

The patterns are stable. A fake bank call from a spoofed official number, paired with a remote-access app, is the dominant one, because the victim authorises everything personally. Then phishing SMS and email in the livery of George, ELBA or Bank Austria; approving the attacker’s device as your authorisation device through a phishing link; the messenger “hi mum” trick, down to about 1,100 cases and €3.2 million in 2025 from roughly 5,000 cases and €9.3 million in 2023; cyber trading fraud at around €120 million a year; and marketplace scams with fake buyer-verification links.

What Do You Do First After a Fraudulent Transfer?

The order matters more than the speed of any single step, and most people get it wrong by reporting to the police first. The recall window is minutes to a few hours, and the police cannot open it. Work through these five steps in sequence.

1. 1. Your bank, immediately. Call the 24/7 blocking hotline, block online banking, and ask for a recall in the same call. The success window is minutes to a few hours; after that, recovery depends entirely on the receiving institution. Once cash has been collected at a counter, there is no recall.
2. 2. Report to the police. Any station takes the report, and there is an online form. You need the case number for every step that follows.
3. 3. Report the scam itself. File with watchlist-internet.at, the reporting office close to the Bundeskriminalamt, and with the ombudsman office for payment problems and phishing at the social affairs ministry.
4. 4. The banking ombudsman, if the bank refuses. Bankenschlichtung is free for consumers, and 55% of the procedures it completed in 2025 ended in an agreement. A further 36% went nowhere because the bank declined to take part, which is worth knowing before you count on it.
5. 5. The FMA, then the civil courts. Complain to the FMA for a supervisory breach, such as a missing instant-transfer price parity or a failure of strong customer authentication, and to the civil courts for the money itself.

What Are Your Rights When You Send Money?

Frequently Asked Questions

German Terms Glossary

Auslandsüberweisung

International transfer, a payment out of Austria

Echtzeitüberweisung

Instant euro transfer, credited in under ten seconds

Empfängerüberprüfung

Verification of Payee, the IBAN-to-name check

Devisenmittelkurs

Mid-market exchange rate, with no margin added

Überweisungsrückruf

Recall, the request to pull a transfer back

Dauerauftrag

Standing order, a transfer that repeats on a fixed date