Taking international Payments??

[Linden Lewis]

How does everyone take international payments? Looking at growing in the US market, and currently get our clients to pay via international bank transfer. But this is a slow process, and is quite expensive for the client.

We sell packages up to £5000, so it's low volume high margin stuff, so keen to avoid someting like Paypal or Google Finance who will take high commission.

Also would like to take payments in $ to make it easier for them rather than £, but with the markets being so volatile at the moment don't want to put ourselves at risk.

Anyone got any bright ideas??

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[DreamLifestyle]

I take US checks and just bank them. Alternatively open a US currency account with a high street bank.

 

[Webtistic]

Linden,

International (urgent) wires generally clear within two days for us with a standard Natwest business account...

Who are you banking with?

 

[Linden Lewis]

Banking with Lloyds, so think opening a $ US account might be an option... Thanks for the tips.

 

[willhitch]

once you open a usd account with them, be careful when transfering money from there into your sterling account. i found in the past lloyds give bad rates of exchange even though youre only moving your money in house. best to use a currency company like rationalfx, always give me good rates and the process is quick. the do same day payments for usd-gbp...
pm me if you want their details.
best of luck
will

 

[Linden Lewis]

Thanks, we have to send currency oversea's to pay for our tours, so have an account with Currency Solutions who seem competitive; so I guess we could use them for the domestic transfer.

 

[Venka]

Hi,

It may be an idea to use a Currency broker for these transactions.

We have recently switched from Fxpaynet to a currency broker (we pay suppliers in USD and Euro) and we save a lot of money as the exchange rate is far better.

Banks in general do tend to have a very wide spread with foreign currencies (ie you get a far worse exchange rate whether you are buying or selling)

If you would like to find out more about a currency broker, just PM me if you want.