8 July 2026
Any business working with international payments sooner or later arrives at the same realisation. The amount a partner sent and the amount that eventually arrives in the account are not the same thing. The difference may be small, or it may represent a noticeable portion of the transaction. And almost always, this difference was not a mistake — it was built into the structure of the operation itself.
Fees, currency mark-ups, and related costs are part of how payment infrastructure normally works. They cannot be eliminated entirely, but they can be anticipated. With the right information, decisions can be made based on the real picture rather than the one that appears on the invoice. Below are several habits that help entrepreneurs work with fees consciously.
This is the foundational habit on which everything else rests. Any international transfer statement has a visible part — a fixed charge for sending the payment. This is the figure that ends up in the accounting records.
The invisible part is the currency mark-up. When a bank converts one currency into another, it uses its own rate, which differs slightly from the interbank rate — the one large banks use to exchange currency between themselves. The gap between these two rates is the real cost of conversion. It is not shown as a separate line and is usually absorbed into the amount the recipient sees.
Practical steps worth taking:
On an individual transaction, the difference may seem trivial. Across a year of international payments, it adds up to a figure that becomes impossible to overlook in the annual report.
Within the UK there are several different payment systems, each designed for a specific type of operation.
UK payment systems:
In the European area, SEPA is the standard for euro payments between countries within the zone. SEPA Instant allows such transfers to be made in ten seconds, around the clock, provided both banks support the standard. Outside the SEPA zone, SWIFT is used for international transfers — a global messaging network through which a payment travels via a chain of correspondent banks.
Each of these systems has its own cost, speed, and applicability. The entrepreneur’s habit is to know in advance which system suits which task, rather than using the same one by default. A payment to a supplier in Germany and a payment to a contractor in Japan are operations with fundamentally different economics.
One of the most common scenarios for losing money on fees works like this. A client in the US pays an invoice in dollars. The bank automatically converts the dollars into the account’s main currency — for example, euros — using its own rate. A few weeks later, the entrepreneur pays a contractor in London in pounds. The bank converts euros into pounds, again using its own rate. In the end, dollars became pounds via euros that the entrepreneur didn’t actually need for the operation. Conversion happened twice, and each time a currency mark-up was applied.
The habit that solves this problem: if the business regularly works with more than one currency, it makes sense to use a multi-currency account. On such an account, dollars are held as dollars, pounds as pounds, euros as euros. Conversion happens only when the entrepreneur consciously initiates it, and only in the direction that is actually needed. This is not an “additional service” — it is a different model of accounting for money, in which the currency does not change form unnecessarily.
Payment terms in a contract are not only about the amount, but also about the speed at which that amount moves. Net 30 means the client must pay the invoice within 30 days. But if payment is sent via SWIFT, it may take another three to five working days to arrive. In practice, the entrepreneur receives the money on day 33–35, not day 30.
Over the long term, this gap turns into a systemic cash flow shortfall. Suppliers operating on Net 30 receive their payments on time, while incoming payments arrive several days late on every invoice.
Simple rules that close this gap:
The choice of system can materially affect whether the payment arrives the same day or several working days later.
When a client from another country pays to an account in a foreign jurisdiction, the transfer usually goes through SWIFT, with all the associated costs in the chain of correspondent banks. The alternative looks different. Modern payment services provide local account details — separate account numbers in several countries at the same time. For example, a business based in the UK may have separate details for payments from the US in dollars, from the EU in euros, and from the UK in pounds.
For the client, such a payment may look like a domestic transfer within their own country — often without the usual SWIFT process or international transfer charges, depending on the provider, route and account terms. For the business, local payment details can reduce intermediary deductions and make incoming payments more predictable. The final amount still depends on the provider, currency, route and applicable fees. This is a technical solution that noticeably changes the economics of incoming payments when working with an international client base.
This is the final habit that makes all the others meaningful. Once every three months, it makes sense to bring together all international transactions for the period and calculate the total cost of processing them. This figure rarely matches the intuitive estimate.
What goes into the calculation:
After such a calculation, it usually becomes clear which operations cost the most and where the infrastructure or payment terms could be changed. Without regular review, these costs remain scattered across hundreds of statement lines and are not perceived as a separate budget category. As with any expense line: until it is measured, it cannot be managed.
Fees are not an anomaly in how a payment system works — they are a structural part of it. They cannot be reduced to zero, but they can be made predictable. Good financial habits for an entrepreneur are not about saving on every pound — they are about understanding what each operation actually costs. When that picture is clear, decisions are made consciously: which system to use, which currency to accept payment in, how to frame payment terms in the contract. It is these decisions, repeated hundreds of times a year, that create the difference between a business that loses money on infrastructure and a business that manages it.
Powered by
even the most complex payments
