What a cross-border payment really costs, and when it arrives
The fee on the screen is rarely the whole price of an international transfer, and the arrival date is often a guess. Both are avoidable, and the difference matters to any company that pays a supplier abroad.
Two costs, one number
Sending money abroad is two operations pretending to be one. The money has to move, and in most cases the currency has to change. The transfer fee is usually visible. The cost of the conversion frequently is not, because it is expressed as an exchange rate rather than as a charge.
A rate is a difficult thing to audit. To know what a conversion cost, you need the reference rate at the moment it happened and the rate that was actually applied. Very few companies capture both, which is why the cost is normally discovered by subtraction: you compare what you sent with what arrived, and the numbers do not agree.
That gap is not fraud, and it is not usually hidden in the legal sense. It is simply priced in a unit that the buyer cannot measure. For a company sending forty supplier payments a month, it is the difference between a budget line and an unexplained variance.
The date you give the supplier
Cost gets the attention, but the operational damage usually comes from timing. A supplier who does not know when the money will land holds the shipment. A contractor who has been told "three to five working days" for the third month running starts asking for payment in advance.
Predictability is worth paying for, and it is measurable in a way that goodwill is not. A SWIFT transfer sent through Reibanq international payments is processed within a day, and the expected arrival is shown on the same screen as the confirm button, alongside the rate and the fee. The point is not that the transfer is instant. It is that the date can be repeated to the person waiting for the money. Reibanq accounts run on payment services supplied and managed by Orenda FS B.V., and client funds are held separately from Reibanq's own money.
Tracking matters for the same reason. A payment that can be followed from the browser, with its status and receipt kept in one place, removes the phone calls that a missing-payment enquiry otherwise generates on both sides of the transaction.
Everything decided on one screen
The design principle is simple to state and unusual to find: nothing about the cost of a payment should arrive after the payment. In practice that means four things.
- The exchange rate is shown before you confirm, and that same rate is the one applied.
- The fee is written as a fee, on its own line, not folded into the rate.
- The expected arrival is stated in advance, so the supplier gets a date rather than a range.
- The payment can be funded from a currency you already hold, in which case there is no conversion at all.
That last point is where the account and the payment stop being separate products. If the dollars you received last month are still dollars, paying a supplier in dollars is a transfer, not an exchange. The cheapest conversion is the one that does not happen.
Where the first payment abroad usually goes
The supply chain. A manufacturer paying for components in another currency needs the cost visible before the order is confirmed, because it belongs in the price of the finished product rather than in a quarterly surprise.
Payroll across countries. People employed or contracted abroad are paid on a fixed day. Knowing the cost of each transfer in advance is what allows a company to promise a net figure rather than an approximate one.
Intercompany movements. Funding a branch or a subsidiary is not a commercial transaction, and a mark-up taken on the way through is pure loss inside the same group.
Software and services. Subscriptions renewing abroad are small individually and substantial together, which is exactly the profile of a cost that never gets reviewed.
Reibanq reaches recipients in 180 jurisdictions, and the fee for each type of transfer is published by plan on the pricing page: the first ten outgoing SEPA transfers each month are free and each one after that costs EUR 1.00, and every fee is priced per operation rather than negotiated case by case.
Three questions before the next transfer
Comparing providers on the headline fee alone produces the wrong answer often enough to be worth avoiding. Three questions are more useful.
What rate will be applied, and is it the one on the screen? If the applied rate is set later, the quoted fee is not the price.
Who pays the intermediary charges? On some correspondent routes the amount that arrives is lower than the amount sent, and the difference lands on the recipient.
What does the recipient see? A payment that arrives without a clear reference creates work at the other end, and the goodwill it costs is real even when the money is correct.
What businesses ask about transfers abroad
How long does an international transfer take?
A SWIFT transfer is processed within a day, and the expected arrival is shown before you confirm. Actual crediting also depends on the receiving institution and the cut-off times in the destination country, which is why a date given in advance is more useful than an average.
What is the difference between a SEPA and a SWIFT payment?
SEPA covers euro payments inside the single euro payments area and is the cheaper and faster route where it applies. SWIFT is the messaging network used for payments outside it, typically involving a currency change and one or more intermediary banks.
Why does the recipient sometimes receive less than the amount sent?
On some correspondent routes an intermediary bank deducts its own charge in transit. It is worth agreeing in advance which side carries those charges, and checking whether your provider states them before you send.
Can I pay from a currency I already hold?
Yes, and it is normally the cheapest option. Funding a transfer from an existing balance in that currency removes the conversion entirely; if you do not hold it, the rate is applied on the same screen as the payment.
See the cost before the money leaves
Payments to 180 jurisdictions, with the rate, the fee and the expected arrival on the same screen as the confirm button.