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Not through the US post office anymore. USPS stopped selling international money orders on October 1, 2024, and on October 1, 2025 foreign posts stopped cashing the ones already out there. If you need to send a guaranteed payment to another country now, your realistic options are wire transfer services, a bank draft, or a bank wire.
USPS ended its international money order service in two stages. First, following a final rule published in the Federal Register in August 2024, it stopped selling new international money orders effective October 1, 2024. Then, effective October 1, 2025, the foreign postal services that had still been cashing them stopped: Albania, Belize, Bolivia, Cape Verde, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guinea, Guyana, Honduras, Mali, Peru, and Sierra Leone. USPS also stopped cashing international money orders issued by Belize and Peru. The service is fully wound down, not paused.
For context, the old limits were modest: international money orders were capped at seven hundred dollars, or five hundred for El Salvador and Guyana. That cap is now history along with the product.
You are not out of luck, but you have paperwork ahead of you. USPS says the purchaser of an international money order can file an inquiry using PS Form 6401, the Money Order Inquiry form. Only the purchaser can file it and receive payment, and payment is issued ten days after the form is processed. If the money order was lost or stolen rather than simply uncashed, the same inquiry process starts a replacement: confirming the loss can take up to thirty days, and the investigation can run up to sixty.
With the service discontinued, old money orders floating around deserve extra scrutiny. Genuine USPS money orders have a repeated Ben Franklin watermark visible when held to light, a vertical multicolored security thread woven through the paper with the letters USPS, and a dollar amount imprinted twice. Discoloration around the amount suggests it was altered. If anything looks off, call the Postal Inspection Service or the Money Order Verification System before accepting it. You cannot stop payment on a postal money order once it is issued, which is exactly why fakes circulate.
| Option | How it works | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Wire transfer service | Cash or card in, cash pickup or bank deposit abroad | Speed matters and the recipient lacks a bank account |
| Bank draft | Your bank issues a guaranteed check in foreign currency | You want something paper-based and traceable |
| Bank wire | Bank-to-bank electronic transfer | The amount is large and both sides have accounts |
| USPS domestic money order | Still sold at post offices, up to one thousand dollars | The payment stays inside the United States |
Yes. Everything above is about international money orders only. USPS still sells domestic money orders at post offices, capped at one thousand dollars each, and they work exactly as before for payments inside the United States. One honest note on scope: LetterAgent mails printed letters to US and Canadian addresses; it does not issue money orders or handle payments beyond its own checkout, so a money order is outside what it can do for you.
Ready to mail it? Send your letter with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and it is printed and mailed.
LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
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