The live mid-market AUD→SHP rate and what it means for a transfer to Saint Helena and Ascension. We explain the process; we never recommend a provider.
| You send (AUD) | Mid-market equivalent (SHP) |
|---|---|
| 500 AUD | 263 SHP |
| 1,000 AUD | 526 SHP |
| 2,000 AUD | 1,053 SHP |
| 5,000 AUD | 2,632 SHP |
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.
Saint Helena had no airport until 2017 and was reachable only by a Royal Mail ship, so for most of this currency’s life every banknote on the island had arrived by sea. The economy runs substantially on United Kingdom support, which is the underlying reason a population of a few thousand sustains a currency of its own at all.
One of the most remote currencies in circulation anywhere, the Saint Helena pound is issued at par with sterling for Saint Helena and Ascension Island. Tristan da Cunha, in the same territory, uses sterling itself rather than this issue, so the three islands do not share one answer.
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.
New to sending money to Saint Helena and Ascension? The corridor guide walks through how a transfer works and what to check. The rest of this corridor: the SHP → AUD page covers the opposite direction, 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 Saint Helena pound 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 Saint Helena and Ascension 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 Saint Helena and Ascension?
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?
A quote is the mid-market rate with the provider’s margin taken out of it. Because that margin is expressed in the rate rather than itemised, it is easy to miss and is usually the bigger half of what a transfer costs.