Remittances are no longer just occasional money transfers. A new Zepz report shows that migrants ages 25 to 34 are now the largest group of senders, while 70% support multiple recipients and nearly half of all transfers are under $50. The findings show how immigrants are increasingly incorporating cross-border family support into their everyday financial planning and budgeting.
When Nitin Sharma, a solutions architect at a major technology company in Silicon Valley, first arrived in the U.S. as a 20-year-old student, he relied on money sent from India to cover his living expenses. But today, a decade later, armed with a professional degree, a work visa and a well-paying job, Sharma says he has happily reversed the roles. He now sends monthly remittances to his aging parents in India.
“For me, to support my parents in India has become part of everyday financial planning. It is as important as paying my apartment rent or contributing to my 401(k),” Sharma told The American Bazaar.
For 35-year-old Shalini Shah, an HR professional whose extended family lives in India, sending regular remittances to her nieces and nephews in India and Australia has become a way of showing love. From birthdays and graduations to festivals, Shah said she sends her nieces and nephews small amounts of money as a token of her affection.
“When you live far away and cannot be there for every important occasion, a small fund transfer is a way of showing you care and you miss them. It’s liberating because it allows you to be a small part of that occasion,” she said.
Both Sharma and Shah belong to a younger generation of immigrants who told The American Bazaar that financial remittances have become part of their regular financial transactions. For them, remittances have evolved beyond occasional transfers to a single family member into a more holistic way of managing responsibility, maintaining connections, sharing and being present from afar.
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Their experiences align with findings from a new insights report by Zepz, the global payments group behind WorldRemit and Sendwave. The report found that adults ages 25 to 34 are now the largest remittance group, women account for almost half of all transactions, and 70% of senders support more than one recipient.
Taken together, the data challenges the traditional picture of one person sending money home to one family member. Instead, many remitters are managing financial responsibilities across several people, households and even countries.
“This data puts numbers to something we’ve always understood: migration doesn’t mean leaving responsibility behind. It means carrying it further, and finding new ways to keep it close,” said Barrie Morris, interim CEO of Zepz.
The report, titled “More Than a Transfer: Understanding Today’s Global Remitter,” analyzed the behavior of more than 5.5 million unique senders across the WorldRemit and Sendwave networks between May 2021 and May 2026.
One of the most striking findings is the emergence of a younger generation of remitters. Adults ages 25 to 34 now account for 30% of all unique senders, making them the largest group. The next-largest segment is adults ages 35 to 44, who account for 27%.
For many Indian Americans and recent immigrants, this reflects a generation that has grown up managing money digitally. They are comfortable juggling finances across countries through mobile apps and digital wallets, often while building careers, repaying student loans and establishing their own households in the United States.
The report also highlights the growing role of women in cross-border financial support. Women now account for 45.9% of remittance transactions, a share that has risen steadily over the past five years. Among senders ages 35 to 44, women account for nearly half, or 49.9%, of all transactions.
Perhaps most revealing is how remittances have evolved from supporting one person to sustaining entire networks. Seventy percent of senders now support more than one recipient, up from 65% five years ago. One in eight sends money to recipients in multiple countries, reflecting increasingly complex family and financial obligations.
For many immigrants, these transfers are rarely large. Nearly half of all remittances, or 45.3%, are below $50, while almost 95% are below $250. The data suggests that remittances are often less about major financial interventions and more about helping cover recurring expenses such as groceries, transportation, utility bills, school supplies and health care costs.
That is something 39-year-old New Jersey resident Saleem Shaik agrees with. He told The American Bazaar, “I send small remittances sometimes for my mom to buy roses back in Lucknow for herself or for my dad to have a kebab dinner. They may not need this money but it’s just a way to stay involved in their everyday lives and easy remittances are more a new way of sharing responsibilities.”
The timing of these transactions also tells a story. Sending activity peaks during the first few days of each month and on Fridays, indicating that many migrants have incorporated family support into their regular budgeting cycles.
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Morris said, “The people in this report are building lives in one country while staying deeply and practically involved in another often several others at once. A parent’s medical costs. A sibling’s school fees. A grandparent who needs a little extra each month. That’s not ‘money sent home’. That’s someone doing the quiet, constant work of holding a family together across a distance.”
The report also points to a subtle but important shift in financial behavior. Nearly a quarter of wallet balances are held for three to seven days before being transferred, and those holding funds during that period tend to deposit larger amounts. This suggests that migrants are increasingly planning and managing money strategically rather than making one-off transfers.
For Indian immigrants navigating rising costs in the U.S. while maintaining commitments abroad, that balancing act can be challenging. Yet the findings reveal a community adapting to those pressures through technology, careful budgeting and long-term planning.
More broadly, the report challenges common assumptions about remittances as simple transactions between a sender and a recipient. Today’s immigrants are often managing financial lives that span multiple households, currencies and countries.
As Morris noted, “This report challenges the old idea of a remittance as a single transaction between two people. What the data actually shows is millions of people managing complex financial lives that stretch across borders, currencies and time zones, and doing it with a level of care and consistency that deserves to be recognized, not just processed.”
For immigrant families, the story of remittances is ultimately not about money alone. It is about maintaining bonds, sharing opportunities and ensuring that distance does not diminish responsibility. In an increasingly connected world, a transfer of even $50 can represent something much larger: the determination to build a future in one country while continuing to support loved ones in another.