The live mid-market AUD→LAK rate and what it means for a transfer to Laos. We explain the process; we never recommend a provider.
| You send (AUD) | Mid-market equivalent (LAK) |
|---|---|
| 500 AUD | 7,785,000 LAK |
| 1,000 AUD | 15,570,000 LAK |
| 2,000 AUD | 31,140,000 LAK |
| 5,000 AUD | 77,850,000 LAK |
These are mid-market equivalents, not transfer quotes - a provider deducts its exchange-rate margin and any fee from these figures. STRUCK 11:00 AEST · TUE 13 OCT.
A continent pretending to be a country - Australia is the only nation that fills an entire continent, with most of its 27 million people clinging to the coast while the red-dirt interior does its own thing.
A blue field with the Union Jack in the canton, a large white seven-pointed Commonwealth Star below it, and the five white stars of the Southern Cross at the fly. Six of the big star's points stand for the states and the seventh for the territories; the Southern Cross marks Australia's place in the southern sky.
The only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, Laos moves at the pace of the Mekong and keeps thousands of Buddhist temples humming. Luang Prabang wakes to a daily procession of saffron-robed monks.
Three horizontal bands of red, dark blue and red, the blue one double-width and bearing a white moon at the centre. Article 115 of the constitution as revised in 2025 calls the white shape a moon, fixes the flag's height at two thirds of its width, each red edge at half the height of the dark blue field and the moon at four fifths of it, and assigns none of them a meaning. The readings of red as the blood shed for independence, of the blue as the Mekong and of the moon as unity or as the full moon over the river are conventional rather than the constitution's.
Source: laoofficialgazette.gov.la · checked 2026-08-26
The kip has lost a great deal of value against major currencies over recent years, which means quoted amounts are large and historical comparisons mislead. Thai baht and US dollars are also widely accepted in Laos, so kip is not the only sensible destination currency.
Australia’s exchange controls went with the float. A Reserve Bank research paper dates their abolition to the December 1983 decision that ended the crawling peg and opened the country to capital moving in both directions. Sanctions are a separate matter and do still apply. Targeted financial sanctions prohibit making assets available to designated persons and entities, and the Australian Sanctions Office within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade maintains the Consolidated List that names them. The other requirement sits with the provider rather than the sender. Before it carries out a first transfer the provider must complete customer identification: collect identifying information, then verify it against reliable and independent documents or electronic data. That is the request for identity documents a first-time sender meets before anything can be sent.
The report that follows is the provider’s, not yours. A reporting entity must lodge an international funds transfer instruction report with AUSTRAC for a transfer of any value into or out of Australia, within ten business days of the instruction. There is no amount below which one is not filed, and on a transfer sent through a provider there is nothing for the sender to lodge. What is left to a sender is timing and route. The banking day that decides when money lands is the destination’s, not Australia’s, and Australian business hours run ahead of nearly every country on this list: Monday morning in Sydney is still Sunday in the Americas. The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures records that payments reaching a beneficiary country outside its operating hours stall until the system reopens. Route matters as much as the hour. A payment may pass through correspondent banks on its way, or through a provider that operates in both countries and, the Reserve Bank notes, avoids some of the costs of that intermediation.
Other views of the same transfer: the LAK → AUD page covers the opposite direction, the AUD/LAK converter page has amount conversion and history, and the currency converter handles any amount. On the other end of this transfer? The receiver’s view covers what arrives and what to check.
How much Lao kip will the recipient actually get?
A little less than the mid-market figures on this page. Providers apply their own exchange rate (the mid-market rate minus a margin) and usually a transfer fee, so the amount that arrives in Laos depends on both. Comparing a provider's quote against the mid-market rate shown here reveals the real cost.
Is there a best day to send money to Laos?
Rates move constantly and Tradergy doesn't forecast them. What you can control is the cost of the transfer itself: the gap between the quoted rate and the mid-market rate, plus any fees.
Why is my provider’s rate worse than this one?
Retail rates are set away from the mid-market midpoint by a margin the provider keeps. Comparing a quote against the reference rate on this page is what makes that margin visible, since it is rarely stated as a fee.