If I sell you a house in Denver, it involves agents; if I sell you a house overseas you could say "oh it still just involves agents" but obviously there's more rigmarole - more agents, more transactions.

International wire transfers typically involve multiple banking systems and operators between the two countries

The statement given on the "finder" site is clear as day and is as reasonable an explanation as is possible.

Note that

• there is a flood of recent questions "but WHY is there a difference in price between A and B bank transactions?"

There are two streams of thought:

• (A) There is no real reason, there is only a rationale. Banks "get away with what they can". Their rationales are bullshit. (Inasmuch as the rationales are bullshit, they are completely obvious and need no discussion - less automation, more parties involved.)

• (B) The operation is more complex so it costs more. (Inasmuch as the operations are complex, they are completely obvious and need no discussion - less automation, more parties involved.)

Note that "A" is trivially "proved" on the grandest scale: in Europe the government said "all transactions will be 30 cents only" and "magically" this was achieved in one day (and the banks still make billions in fees).

Conversely "B" can trivially be "proved" by simply pointing out the (completely obvious, profoundly not worth discussing) system differences.

The answer is either "A" or "B".

"Deciding" between A and B is essentially "political".

You might as well as, are Republicans or Democrats better, or, should Canada be partitioned. It's a completely pointless political-like debate.

Honestly Franck you're not going to get any answer more than "A" or "B".

We will now see a huge amount of discussion on the following themes! ...

What will now inevitably happen on this QA:

• An endless detailed debate about the technical nature of these transactions (which is utterly pointless and irrelevant to the question. Whether you are in camp "A" or "B", the technical nature of these transactions means nothing in deciding on "A" or "B")

• An endless detailed debate on whether "politically" banks are bastards (so: A) or businesses like any other (so: B). This is unanswerable and the details of the debate are pointless here.

• Folks pointlessly explaining the details of how to do a wire transfer, because, they did one once in 1998 :O

• Folks from Europe endlessly pointing out that the US banking system is psychotic and the US doesn't even have pin codes on credit cards (newsflash: this is known)

• Endless bitchy bickering between people who work in the business about who has the most insider knowledge, which is pointless as any amount of technical knowledge has no bearing on "A" or "B" ... which again, is an unanswerable debate.

Finally I would note that...

At worst, these "but why?" questions are just agitprop.

If I post on the travel site "why is bread so bad in the US" all I'm really doing is using a forum to whine, but I'm covering it as a sort of pseudo-scientific question. (This happens on the politics SE site constantly and is a huge PITA.)

Nobody can answer deep epistemological "but why" questions; why is the S&P so strong, why is real estate flat in Tasmania, why are tax rates low in Andorra - who the hell knows?