UmmahFX

Inspiration

Muslim businesses sending money abroad often get a bad deal. Banks and other services quietly give worse exchange rates so they can make more money off the transaction, without telling you upfront. This also affects Muslim immigrants and families sending remittances back home, who face the same hidden costs. We wanted to build something that shows the real cost so people can actually compare and pick the better option.

What it does

It compares exchange rates and fees from different providers, banks, and money transfer services, and shows which one is actually the cheapest for a given transfer. This includes the exchange rate, the fee, and extra costs that do not show up right away.

How we built it

We used Replit, Excel, and Claude. We researched real providers, how their fees work, and what the exchange rate spread actually means, then used that to build our comparison tool.

Challenges we ran into

A big one was data. Banks do not share live exchange rate data, and they definitely do not tell you their exact markup. We had to estimate some of these numbers based on research instead of using exact live numbers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a working tool that actually solves a real problem people run into, even with limited access to good data.

What we learned

We learned how much of the cost in these transfers is hidden inside the exchange rate itself, not just in the fee. We also learned about Sharia-compliant alternatives to normal hedging tools like forward contracts.

What's next for UmmahFX

We would like to connect it to live exchange rate data instead of estimates, add more banks and currencies, and look into adding a Sharia-compliant way to lock in exchange rates for future payments. We would also like to do more market research to get more accurate estimates for transfer time and transfer fees, particularly the intermediary fee.