Global Remittance Flows Screensaver
The Global Remittance Flows screensaver ranks countries by real money sent home by migrant workers on a live bar board, drawn key-less from the World Bank's open data API. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Global Remittance Flows screensaver works
The saver fetches the latest published remittance-inflow figures for every country from the World Bank's open data API, with no key required.
Countries rank by real total remittances received, with each bar sized to scale.
The board eases smoothly if the ranking shifts on refresh.
Choose how many countries appear on the board at once.
Counting money that crosses borders in small amounts
Remittance statistics come from balance-of-payments accounts. The World Bank defines personal remittances as the sum of personal transfers and compensation of employees. Personal transfers are current cash or in-kind transfers between resident and nonresident individuals, while compensation of employees is the income of border, seasonal and other short-term workers employed in an economy where they are nonresident. The figures draw on the IMF's Balance of Payments Statistics database, and World Bank staff fill some missing data with estimates.
Measuring them is hard. Formal channels such as banks and money-transfer companies leave records, but cash carried by hand and informal systems are not fully captured, particularly in some corridors. Practice also differs between countries: a 2010 central-bank survey found some counted only transfers reported by banks, and some reported nothing. Ranking by total received naturally favours populous countries with large diaspora communities.
A bar chart of totals is also not a measure of dependence. A modest sum can be a huge share of a small economy, while an enormous total can be only a small part of a large one. Treat the board as an overview of scale, not a live money tracker.
A worked example
You'll see large recipient countries like India and Mexico near the top — real published World Bank figures on money migrant workers send home, a major real economic flow.
Settings & tips
- Countries shown sets how many bars appear.
- Accent recolours the bars.
- Remittances are a real, often-overlooked economic lifeline larger than foreign aid for many countries.
Frequently asked questions
- What are remittances?
- Real money migrant workers send back to family in their home country — a genuine, major global economic flow.
- Is a key needed?
- No — the World Bank's open data API is free and key-less.
- How current are the figures?
- As current as each country's latest published World Bank data.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- Are remittances larger than foreign aid?
- In aggregate, remittances to low- and middle-income countries are several times larger than official development aid, though individual countries vary and some receive more aid than remittances.
- Do the figures include money sent informally?
- Not fully. Recorded transfers dominate the statistics, so cash carried across borders and informal networks tend to be undercounted.
- Where do the underlying numbers come from?
- The World Bank's remittance data draw on the IMF's Balance of Payments Statistics database, with some missing values filled by World Bank estimates.