The live mid-market AUD→SOS rate and what it means for a transfer to Somalia. We explain the process; we never recommend a provider.
| You send (AUD) | Mid-market equivalent (SOS) |
|---|---|
| 500 AUD | 199,105 SOS |
| 1,000 AUD | 398,210 SOS |
| 2,000 AUD | 796,420 SOS |
| 5,000 AUD | 1,991,050 SOS |
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.
Perched on the Horn of Africa, Somalia has the longest mainland coastline on the continent and a deep tradition of poetry that earned it the nickname 'nation of bards'.
A light blue field with a single white five-pointed star at the centre. Article 6(1) of the 2012 Provisional Constitution describes the flag without interpreting it, giving the blue no meaning, shade reference or origin; the government's own description takes the star's five points as the regions where Somali people live. The widely repeated account that the blue was taken from the United Nations flag is not stated by any Somali official source.
Somalia has not issued new official banknotes in decades, and the US dollar handles most transactions above the smallest. Mobile wallets are close to universal and many are denominated in dollars, so the shilling is frequently not what a recipient ends up holding, whatever the transfer was quoted in.
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.
Where to go next: the SOS → AUD page covers the opposite direction, the AUD/SOS 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 Somali shilling 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 Somalia 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 Somalia?
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?
The mid-market rate is the midpoint between global buy and sell prices, and no retail provider deals at it. The gap between it and a quote is the provider’s margin, which is usually where most of the cost of a transfer sits.