Explained
Why the usual transfer services don't serve Iran
If you have tried to send money to Iran the way you would to almost anywhere else, you will have found the option simply is not there. Here is why.
This page explains why a market looks the way it does. It is not legal advice and it is not a workaround guide. Sanctions rules are detailed, they differ by country, and they change. If you need to know what you personally may lawfully do, check the current published guidance from the authority where you live — for US persons, that is OFAC's Iran sanctions programme — and take advice if anything is unclear.
The banking channel is the problem
Iran's financial system operates largely outside the global banking infrastructure that ordinary transfer services depend on. Iranian banks have been widely disconnected from international messaging and correspondent networks, and the international card schemes do not operate there. A service like Wise or Remitly works by moving money between bank accounts on each side; where the receiving side is effectively unreachable, the product cannot exist.
Why it is not simply "banned to send money"
Sanctions regimes are more specific than the popular summary suggests. Personal remittances to family have often been treated differently from commercial dealings, and humanitarian and food-and-medicine channels have had their own provisions. But the detail matters enormously, it differs between the US, UK and EU regimes, and it changes with political events.
That is precisely why we are not going to summarise the current rules as though they were settled. Any summary written today may be wrong in six months, and getting it wrong is expensive for the reader, not for us.
What fills the gap in practice
Two things, historically: the sarafi — the exchange-house networks that have handled currency and cross-border value transfer for generations, working on a broker-to-broker basis similar to hawala elsewhere — and, more recently, crypto, which is why USDT is quoted routinely on Iranian rate boards alongside dollars and gold.
We describe these because they are the reality of the market and because understanding them is necessary to read an Iranian rate board at all. Describing how a system works is not the same as recommending you use it, and the legal position of any particular route is yours to establish before you act.
Where to check the current rules
Trying to make sense of a rate board? Start with toman vs rial →