Good point. Yes, when I researched this, I found that the fee can go a lot higher with the monetary conversion in most places, which is not a big surprise. For this article, I tried to ignore that part for simplicity's sake, but it is a big issue in its own right. Hopefully, if the transfer fee is low enough (free?), then the currency exchange will not add too much more to the cost. But there will always be some costs, unless and until people can pay for what they need directly with Steem or Steem Dollars.
RE: Screwing the World’s Poor for $16 Billion? Steem and SD Can Cut the Cost of Money Transfers and Take Down the Predatory Remittance Industry