Sending Money to Panama: Wise, Wires and Fees

Wise's own live calculator charges $9.03 to move $10,000 from a US bank account into a Panama bank account, funded by ACH bank transfer. Send the same $10,000 by traditional wire and the cost is at least $82.45: Bank of America's current fee schedule charges $45 for an international outgoing wire sent in US dollars, and Banco General's published commission table charges $37.45 to receive an international transfer. Both figures came directly from each institution's own site, checked in August 2026.

Most people reading this are not moving money for fun. They are paying a reservation deposit, funding a closing, or setting up the account that will receive their pension once residency lands. So the answer that matters is not just which app is cheapest, it is which route is cheap enough, fast enough, and documented well enough that a Panamanian bank does not stall it on the day it has to arrive.

Key takeaways

• Wise's ACH-funded bank transfer costs a flat $9.03 whether you send $1,000 or $10,000 to a Panama bank account, per Wise's own live pricing tool. Wise.com, checked August 2026.
• Wise's card-funding option is capped at $2,000 for this corridor. Above that, the debit and credit card payment methods are disabled and you fund from a bank account instead. Wise.com, checked August 2026.
• Remitly publishes its own formula: Economy costs 0.54% of the amount plus $4.99, Express costs 1.34% plus $4.99. On $10,000 that is $58.99 Economy or $138.99 Express. Remitly.com, checked August 2026.
• A bank wire carries a fee at each end. Bank of America's Personal Schedule of Fees, effective February 20, 2026, charges $45 for an international outgoing wire sent in US dollars ($30 domestic), and Banco General's commission table, updated March 2026, charges $37.45 to receive one. Neither of those two fees moves with the size of the transfer, though an intermediary bank in the chain can deduct its own charge on top.
• We found no Panamanian tax on an incoming wire transfer. What you pay on arrival is your bank's commission, not a levy.
• A 1% US federal excise tax applies to remittances funded with cash, a money order or a cashier's check, for transfers after 31 December 2025. That is IRC Section 4475 and it is statute, in force. Transfers funded from a bank account fall outside the trigger. The exemption for card-funded transfers rests on regulations that are still only proposed.

The short answer: which route for which transfer

The wire is the most expensive line in that table and still the right answer for some readers. Fee size is not the only thing you are buying, and the compliance and practical-tips sections below explain why.

What Wise actually charges to send money to Panama

Wise's pricing page for USD-to-Panama transfers runs a live calculator, and the fee depends entirely on how you fund the transfer rather than on some blended average.

For a $1,000 transfer, funding the payment directly from a US bank account (Wise calls this "bank transfer," essentially an ACH pull) costs $9.03 in total fees, and the recipient in Panama gets $990.97. Funding it with direct debit instead costs $4.61, the cheapest option at this size, with $995.39 landing in Panama. A debit card costs $15.23, and a credit card costs $64.39.

For a $10,000 transfer, the bank-transfer fee stays exactly where it was: $9.03, because at this corridor it behaves like a flat processing cost rather than a percentage. Direct debit scales with the amount and rises to $19.89. Card funding is disabled entirely above $2,000 for this route, so if you are moving a five-figure sum, bank transfer is your only Wise option, and it happens to be the cheapest one too.

On timing, Wise's calculator did not show us a number of days. It showed an arrival date, "by Tuesday" for direct debit and "by Wednesday" for bank transfer on the day we checked. One to three business days is our reading of what those dates imply from a midweek start, not a window Wise published, so work from the date on your own confirmation screen.

The practical read: under roughly $3,000, direct debit tends to beat bank transfer on fees. Above roughly $4,000, bank transfer's flat $9.03 wins, and it is your only option once past the $2,000 card ceiling anyway. Between those two figures the two methods are close enough that it is worth running both. We priced two points, $1,000 and $10,000, so treat the crossover as a band rather than a line, and run your own numbers through Wise's calculator before you commit, since these figures move.

What Remitly actually charges

Remitly publishes its fee structure directly on its Panama pricing page: Economy costs 0.54% of the amount you send plus $4.99. Express costs 1.34% plus $4.99.

Run the math and a $1,000 transfer costs $10.39 on Economy or $18.39 on Express. A $10,000 transfer costs $58.99 on Economy or $138.99 on Express. Remitly delivers to Panama by bank deposit or cash pickup depending on the recipient's choice. The pricing page gives no delivery-time guarantee and does not publish cash-pickup limits, so if a large cash collection is your plan, confirm the ceiling with Remitly before you rely on the fee arithmetic above, and work from your own confirmation screen on timing.

Against Wise, Remitly was not the cheaper option at either amount we checked. On $1,000, Remitly's cheapest tier ($10.39) still costs more than Wise's cheapest ($4.61). On $10,000, the gap widens: Remitly Economy ($58.99) costs more than six times Wise's bank-transfer fee ($9.03). Remitly's fee scales with the amount sent, Wise's ACH option largely does not, and that difference is the whole story at higher amounts.

What a bank wire actually costs, on both ends

A traditional wire has a fee on each side of the transfer, and most comparisons only quote one of them.

On the US side, Bank of America's Personal Schedule of Fees, effective February 20, 2026, lists a domestic outgoing wire at $30 and an international outgoing wire sent in US dollars at $45. (Send it in foreign currency instead and BofA waives the wire fee but applies an undisclosed exchange-rate markup, which does not help you here since Panama uses the US dollar.) We checked Bank of America's schedule directly. If you bank elsewhere, pull your own bank's current fee schedule before you wire anything, because that is the one number in this section we cannot check for you.

On the Panama side, Banco General's commission table, updated March 2026, charges $37.45 to receive an international wire transfer into a personal account. Neither of those fees is a percentage, so a $1,000 wire and a $10,000 wire attract the same combined $82.45 from the two banks at either end. Treat that as a floor rather than a total: correspondent banks in the chain can deduct their own charge in transit, and neither institution publishes what an intermediary will take on an inbound transfer. The smaller your transfer, the worse a wire looks: 8.2% of a $1,000 transfer, 0.8% of a $10,000 one.

We checked Banco General specifically because it comes up repeatedly as a bank that opens accounts for foreign non-residents, and its account-opening requirements are covered in our banking guide. We have not verified the equivalent incoming-wire fee at Banistmo or BAC Credomatic, so we are not quoting numbers for them.

Sending money out of a Panama account internationally is a separate and pricier line on Banco General's table: 1% of the amount, minimum $26.75, maximum $64.20 through online banking, plus a tiered correspondent-bank charge running from $0 under $1,000 up to $30 above $25,000. Branch-initiated outgoing transfers are priced higher than online ones; we have the online tier from the bank's own table and have not separately confirmed the branch tier, so ask at the counter rather than assuming. Worth knowing if you ever need to send a deposit back the other way.

The 1% remittance tax, and who it does not touch

A 1% federal excise tax on certain transfers out of the United States applies to remittance transfers occurring after 31 December 2025, under IRC Section 4475, created by the legislation most coverage calls the One Big Beautiful Bill. The tax itself is in the Code and it is in force, so treat it as real rather than pending.

What it reaches is narrow, and the narrowness is statutory. Section 4475 applies only where the sender provides the transfer provider with cash, a money order, a cashier's check, or a similar physical instrument. Fund the transfer from a bank account and you are outside the trigger, because a bank debit is not a physical instrument. That covers how almost every expat sending recurring income actually pays, including a normal Wise ACH transfer and a bank wire.

The card position is the part still settling, and it is worth stating precisely rather than as a flat no. Treasury and the IRS published proposed regulations on 13 April 2026 (REG-114499-25) which define the terms by reference to the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and extend the exemption to transfers funded by any credit or debit card, whatever country issued it. Those regulations are proposed and not final, so the card carve-out could in principle change before adoption. The IRS has separately granted providers relief from failure-to-deposit penalties for the first three calendar quarters of 2026, which is a fair signal of how new the machinery still is.

The practical read: bank-funded transfers are outside this tax on the face of the statute. Card-funded transfers are very probably outside it too, on a rule that is not yet final. Hand over banknotes at a counter and it applies, and even then it is a 1% add-on.

Compliance, documentation, and the FBAR threshold

None of Wise, Remitly, or a bank wire moves money to Panama without some documentation trail. On the Panamanian side, the underlying framework is the anti-money-laundering regime covered in our banking guide, which puts bank supervision under the Superintendencia de Bancos and requires banks to document a client's income and the origin of funds. That is why a Panama bank asks questions about a large incoming wire. If you are opening the receiving account for the first time, the same guide covers what Banco General actually asks of a foreign applicant, including the vínculo con Panamá, the "link to Panama" requirement, for which we have found no published checklist.

On the US side, if you are a US citizen or resident and the combined value of your foreign financial accounts, including a new Panama bank account, exceeds $10,000 at any point during the year, the Treasury requires an FBAR filing (FinCEN Form 114), per the IRS's own FBAR guidance. Penalties for not filing are civil and, in willful cases, criminal, and the civil maximum is adjusted for inflation each year rather than fixed at one number.

Practical tips before you send

• Link a bank account to Wise before you need it. Card funding is disabled above $2,000 on this corridor, so a five-figure transfer needs a bank-funded account already verified. Discovering that on closing day is an avoidable and expensive surprise.
• Match the funding method to the amount. Direct debit under roughly $3,000, bank transfer above roughly $4,000, and price both in between. The crossover exists because one fee scales and the other does not.
• Consider a bank wire for a single very large transfer, such as a home-sale payout, an inheritance, or a purchase completion. Wise and Remitly are priced and built for regular income transfers. A wire is the format Panamanian banks and closing attorneys are most used to seeing for a purchase, which is worth something on the day even though the transfer providers also produce records. Ask your own attorney which they prefer rather than assuming.
• Send a small test transfer first when a new receiving account is involved, so the account details and the bank's own handling are proven before the real amount moves.
• Build slack around a deadline. None of these providers publish a guaranteed compliance-review timeline, so treat any specific day count you see quoted as an estimate and give yourself room.
• Tell your Panama bank what is coming and why, in advance, when the transfer is large. Origin-of-funds documentation is the thing that holds transfers, and it is far easier to supply before the money arrives than after.

Your next step

Almost everyone who reads this page is about to move money for a reason: a reservation deposit on an apartment, the balance at closing, or the first transfer into a new account once residency is underway. We can help with what sits on either side of that transfer. Tell us what you are buying or renting, roughly when, and whether the receiving account already exists, and we will come back with what the payment schedule normally looks like, what the seller or developer will expect and when, and which properties actually fit your budget. Use the form below, and it costs nothing to ask.

Frequently asked questions