
Ask HN: What are the simplest ways to pay your engineers outside of US? - sahin-boydas
I am looking for robust payment solution which has nearly no fees.<p>Transferwise
- I am pulling my hair with transferwise.
- Their bank of america integration is super buggy
- They have weird limits. 5000 USD daily limit etc etc. 
- Very unstable UI. I cannot count how many time I had to reenter receipt info.
- Horrible non US base support<p>Bank of America
45 USD wire transfer. WTF.<p>Citibank
27 USD wire transfer<p>What are you guys using?
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koliber
I have almost always received payments via bank wire transfer. While it costs
$20-$50 (depending on which bank, exact figures may vary). If you are billing
for $5000.00, that's 1%. If $10,000, then it's 0.5%.

For smaller amounts, PayPal was painless enough. Even though their % is
relatively high, for small invoices the total fee is less than a bank wire
transfer.

There are no no-fee options. Transferring money costs money. The quicker you
come to terms with this, the easier you will sleep. It's a cost of doing
business. Raise your fees to cover the transfer cost.

For people thinking BitCoin, please keep in mind that the price is volatile
and this means that what you invoice is significantly different from what you
will end up with in your currency. Also, it will be tough convincing most
companies to send you payments via BitCoin.

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seekingcharlie
I set up a US bank account on a visit to the US that my employer pays into. I
then use OzForex to transfer to my Australian savings account.

Remember, it's not just the wire transfer fee that you pay when you use a
bank. You are always going to be charged for the actual exchange rate
conversion too.

I believe Transferwise / OzForex are the lowest rates you can get.

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s_m
I used to use XE when I needed to transfer money from the US to my UK
accounts. I never had any problems with it, but I only ever used it to
transfer money between my own accounts and never to other peoples', so my
experience might not apply to your situation.

~~~
koliber
From what I recall, you need to wire money to XE, and then pay XE for another
wire to the destination account. I did this once a long time ago. While the
wire fees were on the low side, it is not a cheap way to transfer money.

XE does offer the advantage of doing the forex conversion from USD to your
currency. However, I don't think the OP was asking about changing currency.

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WhiteOwlLion
You might want to look at HSBC. Some accounts provide for free international
wires. Last I researched, their business accounts allowed you to send free
international wires. You had to be a brick & mortar business (the type that
might sign up for a SBA loan).

[https://www.us.hsbc.com/1/2/home/personal-banking/global-
ban...](https://www.us.hsbc.com/1/2/home/personal-banking/global-
banking/global-transfers)

~~~
sahin-boydas
this looks really cool.

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wayn3
[https://transferwise.com/](https://transferwise.com/)

I don't know what payers are using but as a payee, I'm pretty happy with
transferwise.

Btw, 15-50 bucks is standard for wire transfers. Wire transfers are meant to
be used for large amounts of money so those fees are usually considered
"nominal".

When a paycheck for 10k comes in i really dont care that someone deducted 15
bucks. Its less than forex.

~~~
brianwawok
Whoa the receiver pays the fee? Seems like the sender should pay the fee. Same
as mailing a check out, the sender should pay for the stamp.

~~~
wayn3
The sender pays the fee. But if I had to pay the fee I wouldn't care.

Because seriously, 15 bucks?

~~~
brianwawok
Its the principle of the thing.

If my employee says I get $2000 per paycheck. I should get $2000 per paycheck.
Not $2000 - $15 processing fee - $12 HR fee - $1 stamp fee - $7 tax filing
fee...

~~~
wayn3
when you're going to die, I'm sure your kids will appreciate all those
pointless principles you wasted all that time on. ask my dad how well thats
working out for him.

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terrortrain
Bitcoin? Depends on their country though for how hard that is to turn into
their local currency.

~~~
atmosx
That's terrible. I wouldn't accept getting paid in BTC.

How is the payee going to cash out? One needs to send BTC to an exchange, pray
the rate will remain at least equal to the day he received payment and accept
a substantial cut for the bank transfer.

By all means, it's a bad idea.

