Saint Helena: a tariff that prices only one direction

The usual way to answer a question about charges at the far end is to read the destination bank's tariff. The Bank of St Helena publishes one, it is current, and it is specific. It also does not contain the line a sender would be looking for.

Key Takeaways

• The bank's schedule of rates, fees and charges is effective 1 April 2026 and has an International Payments section.
• That section prices international remittance outward, a recall of funds at £5.00, and a payment enquiry or tracer request at £5.00.
• That section carries no line for receiving an international remittance at all.
• The bank states that standard international charges outside its control are sometimes applied and can reduce what it receives.
• Payments are accepted in sterling only, so the conversion happens at the sending end rather than on arrival.

What the published schedule actually prices

The section is short, and the argument turns on what is not in it, so it is worth reproducing as it is printed rather than described:

International Payments
INTERNATIONAL REMITTANCE (Outward)
Minimum charge for payments up to £3,000                  £15.00
Payments over £3,000 (up to a maximum £15,000)            0.5%
Payments over £15,000                                     capped at £75
  Agent charges may be applied to payments made outside of the UK.

Recall of Funds                                           £5.00
Payment Enquiry / Tracer Request                          £5.00

One remittance heading, and it reads outward. Three charge lines beneath it, a note about agent charges, and two further lines for a recall and a tracer request. There is no second remittance heading, no percentage stated against money arriving, and no flat credit charge.

An absence is not the same as free

It would be easy to read a missing line as a promise, and the bank does not offer one. Its own guidance for people receiving money says that on occasions standard international charges are applied to a remittance which are outside the control of the bank, and which may result in less money being received by the bank than was originally remitted.

That sentence locates a possible cost rather than promising none. Where such a charge is taken, it is taken before the payment reaches the island, by institutions in the chain between the sending bank and the destination, and it is not governed by the destination's tariff because it is not the destination taking it.

The distinction is easy to lose where a receiving institution charges something of its own, because the two costs then arrive together. Here they come apart: one of them is published and priced, and it is the one going the other way.

One published intermediary

The final leg is fixed rather than negotiated, and the bank names the institution that carries it. It publishes a single correspondent in London, with its identifier code, alongside its own details. What sits between an Australian sending bank and that institution is not published anywhere.

That has a practical consequence for reading the cost. Where a payment can travel by several routes, a deduction taken in transit is hard to attribute to anyone in particular. Here the bank publishes one, so one link in the chain is a matter of record rather than inference.

The Australian dollar to Saint Helena pound page carries the reference figures for the pair itself.

The schedule prices the exception, not the ordinary case

Most tariffs price the service and leave the failure case unpriced. This one prices the failure case twice, once for a tracer request and once for a recall, while leaving the ordinary receipt of a payment with no line at all.

It names a figure for tracing a payment that did not arrive as expected, and names none for receiving one that did. What it does not do is say anything either way about what a payment will be worth when it lands, or about who bears either of those two charges. Reading an unpriced line as a priced one at zero is the mistake this section exists to head off.

Sterling only, and what that moves

Sterling is the only currency the bank will take, and its guidance puts the obligation to get there on the person sending. For a reader in Australia that places the conversion, and whatever it costs, at the Australian end of the transaction rather than on arrival.

This matters to the charge question because it removes one of the two places a far-end cost normally hides. A payment that arrives in the wrong currency and is converted on receipt carries a conversion cost applied by the destination. That route is closed here, because the bank does not accept a payment in anything but sterling. What is left at the far end is whatever the correspondent chain takes, which the published tariff does not describe at all.

Where each cost actually sits

Three places can take something out of a payment on this corridor, and the destination bank prices none of them.

The first row is the certain one: the conversion into sterling happens on every payment, because the bank will not take anything else. The middle row is the occasional one, and it is the row nobody publishes a figure for. Its absence from the destination's schedule is not an oversight, because the charge is not the destination's to publish.

How long this answer holds

The schedule is dated effective 1 April 2026. It carries a general note that fees and charges are subject to periodic review and may be amended as required, with notice provided accordingly. That note is the only thing it says about how long its contents hold.

So the finding here is a finding about one revision of one document. The absence of an inward line is what that revision shows, and a later revision could add one without anything else in this guide changing. The two figures worth re-checking against a current copy are the effective date and whether the International Payments section has grown a second remittance heading.

Where to look next

Understanding transfer fees covers the separate question of cost carried in the rate rather than in a stated fee. Who maintains the codes on a transfer explains the identifiers that route a payment through a chain like this one. How international transfers work sets out the ordinary sequence a payment moves through.

Sources

• Bank of St Helena, Rates, Fees and Charges, effective 1 April 2026 - the International Payments section reproduced above in full, its one outward remittance heading and three charge lines, the agent-charges note, the recall and tracer lines, the absence of any inward remittance line, and the closing note that fees are subject to periodic review and may be amended with notice
• Bank of St Helena, international remittance receipts - that the bank accepts sterling only and requires other currencies to be converted before remitting, the single London correspondent and its identifier code, and the statement that standard international charges outside the bank's control are on occasions applied and may reduce what it receives
• Bank of St Helena, useful documents and forms - the page that publishes the Rates, Fees and Charges brochure, and the route by which the dated revision cited here was obtained

General information about sending money to Saint Helena and about the charges published by the receiving institution there. Not financial advice, and not a recommendation of any product or institution. Reviewed by the Tradergy editorial team, September 2026.