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I've had some experience with this myself, although I haven't gotten robbed outside a WU yet; I wrote a little about my Argentine experience in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27448744.

It's important to remember that WU's fees are so high in large part because WU is assuming risks (of identity fraud, of regulatory blockage, and of cash theft) that Bitcoin largely avoids.

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WU incurred $41.3 million in "non-credit related losses," which includes fraud in 2020[1] which is only maybe 1% of their revenue. It had another ~$40 million in expected credit losses (primarily from agents), so I think ~2% of the fee goes to losses.

Since their gross margins are consistently 40% and their operating margins are ~20% I think barriers to entry/international government regulations better explains the high fees.

[1] 2020 10-k (ctrl-f for 41.3)

Thanks for digging that up. Yeah, I suspected that the "regulatory blockage" thing there might account for more of the risks than armed robbery :)

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