- An elderly couple who withdraws pension income from their UK bank account while living in Spain;
- Parents who gift money earned in Portugal to a relative in Brazil, who then uses that money to buy goods and services in Brazil;
- Someone doing holiday work in Japan, buying a smartwatch there, and then bringing that item back home to Germany;
- Unregulated or even illegal remittances, like when money changes hands in human trafficking between the borders of two countries.
Because of this variety, the overall market size of these international transfers is often merely an estimate. Remittance data in 2024 exclusively consists of calculations based on historical data covering the number of migrant stock per country. Sources hope to improve the overall data quality soon. Despite these data issues, what trends can one observe already?