
Ask HN: How do you get paid for remote freelance work? - tbarbugli
Are there any better alternatives to ol&#x27; Paypal?
======
patio11
Easiest for (without loss of generality) US clients: Establish a US bank
account and get paid with checks, ACH (in-country electronic transfers), or
wire transfers.

Easiest for you: Establish a bank account in your country and instruct your US
clients to pay you with international wire transfers.

US clients are often not very experienced with international wire transfers
and it causes hitches for their internal processes and banks, so the US
account option will save you a _lot_ of friction on a per-client basis in
return for having more headaches up front. (The easiest way to set up a US
bank account if you don't physically reside in the US is to do it through a
local branch of a US-homed megabank. Despite the general impression of a lot
of freelancers on this matter, international commerce is in fact fairly
routine and "the Patriot Act" \-- Know Your Customer and anti-moneylaundering
regulations -- are not an absolute barrier to this.)

You should probably avoid using Paypal for transfers of more than a few
hundred dollars. I like Paypal, don't get me wrong, but they're not well-
suited to running a consultancy on top of.

~~~
edanm
Just to add to this, I think any serious company you'd work with would be
shocked by someone wanting to be paid in anything other than a wire transfer
(and by "shocked", read "wouldn't be able to do it and wouldn't take you
seriously because of it). In my experience, this is how almost all payments
are made in the real world.

If you're a professional, use a wire transfer like everybody else.

~~~
patio11
Absolutely correct with regards to "clients will neither comply with nor be
impressed by requests to pay in any manner they're not used to paying by", but
I think that wire transfers are actually fairly exotic by US standards. They
typically expect to pay with checks or ACH payments. (More often checks, in my
experience. Source: I've cashed hundreds of thousands of dollars of them, and
every time it happens I worry that this is finally the time that I'll be shot
for robbing the bank.)

~~~
bdunn
Imagine what it's like to walk into your Podunk suburban bank every two weeks
with a $50K+ check in your hands from a company with a .com in their name.
Yeah, that was fun.

But Patrick's absolutely right re: checks. If cash flow is tight, my favorite
trick is to FedEx a prepaid overnight envelope to your client. Ask them to
place the check inside. This elimates the "check is in the mail" song and
dance, and it's only marginally more expensive than a wire fee.

------
petecooper
Background: I'm a UK freelancer working with UK, EU, US and RotW clients.

Per other commenters, my UK and EU clients are usually happy to pay by bank
transfer. My invoices include UK payment details, along with IBAN and SWIFT
details. I am also starting to include Paypal details to go with the path of
least resistance.

Now, US clients tend to pay via Paypal or US check. In the past I've used
brokers like AuctionChex[1], and also used a USD deposit account with CITI[2].

AuctionChex went out of favour with me when their exchange rates went into
free fall for no obvious reason, and CITI screwed me for fees after a mistake
at their end. I no longer use either.

With the CITI USD account, it is possible to have it fee-free if you're
careful: if you have a current account and 2 standing orders set up, hold a
certain balance and you transfer in a given amount per month, there is no fee
for either the current account or the USD account.

Now, I take the hit on USD checks and use my business bank (NatWest) account
for it. They charge a set-fee to process the cheque, around 10GBP for the
value I deposit, and I just mark it on my accounts as a bank charge. My
accountant is happy, and there are no shady brokers in the equation.

[1] [http://auctionchex.com](http://auctionchex.com) [2]
[http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/banking/international/eur...](http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/banking/international/eurocurrent.htm)

------
pmorici
Bitcoin, hands down. Specifically Bitpay You can get paid in 9 different
currencies in 33 countries with 0% fees. Zero exchange rate risk unless you
want it. Bitpay is especially nice for freelancing because you can issue
manual invoices.

[https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-
us/articles/201890513](https://support.bitpay.com/hc/en-us/articles/201890513)

I use Bitcoin, Paypal, and Stripe in my own business and I like Bitcoin the
best by far. No charge back hassles, zero fees, no waiting 3 days for ACH
payment confirmation.

There is one draw back that I see, that being that right now it isn't quite
popular enough yet that it can be your only payment method. Some people are
just not going to be capable of using it. That said you would be surprised I
suggested it to a parts supplier I was working with who because of their
location costs me $110 per wire to pay invoices. At first he told me no way
until I told him flat out he was losing business on my smaller orders because
even though his product was best on price the very high transaction fees made
them more expensive for orders under several thousand dollars. They were
interested in it all of a sudden. Funny how that works.

------
someguy1233
I would say Bitcoin, although my background is a little different to yours.

I primarily get hired to build Web applications which deal with some type of
bitcoin payment (no bitpay or coinbase), so it makes sense for me to be paid
in Bitcoin.

I'm a Bitcoin evangelist, so I generally pay for most things with bitcoin, so
I don't have the issue of converting it to fiat.

------
davedx
It depends on the company. I always try to get people to pay with direct bank
transfer, which is very easy within Europe now everyone has an IBANN by
default, but seems to be trickier for clients with US bank accounts.

I've so far been paid by: direct bank transfer; Paypal; check.

Bitcoin is a viable alternative for overseas transfers and is worth
investigating.

------
kphild
Transferwise! For payments from the US to my country (EU) there is a fixed 1%
fee. In addition, their exchange rate is 3% better than in my local bank.
Clients send the money with ACH or wire transfer. I have it in my bank after
two days. Overall, much faster and cheaper than Paypal or international
transfers.

------
tschellenbach
at 2.9% + 30 cents stripe isn't all too bad
[https://stripe.com/nl/pricing](https://stripe.com/nl/pricing) you have to
build your own checkout page though

~~~
tomasien
That's a ton (it's really 5%) for for convenient international movement of
money, I actually agree it's not horrible given the dearth of better options.

Something built on BTC/Steller/Ripple will probably improve upon this soon,
and HOPEFULLY somebody nails international ACH and makes it super
easy/safe/reliable in the next few years. That would help Steller/Ripple/BTC
networks and provide a non-crypto option which, let's face it, no matter how
bullish you are on crypto it's gonna be a while before you can reliably expect
someone to participate in the crypto economy.

------
BrandonM
I'm a US employee who's been working part-time and traveling abroad for the
last 2-1/2 months. I have a Charles Schwab Investor Checking account that has
no-fee ATMs all over the world (no ATM fee, no conversion fee, ATM fee
reimbursement).

My employer does direct deposit into that account, but they also accept ACH
and wire transfers, and you can also use their mobile app to deposit checks
with your smartphone. I'm not sure how difficult it is for a non-US-citizen to
open one of their accounts, but perhaps it's worth looking into.

------
junto
What's wrong with bank transfers?

Or do you mean internationally remote?

~~~
tbarbugli
for EU-US payments bank transfers seems quite expensive to me

~~~
iamwithnail
They are - I'd try something like Transferwise, that's what we use to pay our
international contractors. Or Stellars.

~~~
lucaspiller
+1 on TransferWise. For other countries I've found Hifx
([http://www.hifx.co.uk/](http://www.hifx.co.uk/)) to be fast and not too
expensive.

------
presty
What, no one saying bitcoin? :)

~~~
tbarbugli
good point, this should be what BT is made for (or at least a very good use
case) and yet, no mention.

~~~
patio11
I'm going to again solidify my position as HN's Official Bitcoin Critic with
this, but the reason I didn't suggest it is because BTC is a terrible method
for doing international payments.

1) See elsewhere on this page where we explained that most companies are
unwilling to add new payment types to accommodate individual vendors. This is
as true for Bitcoin as it is for Paypal. It is probably more true, actually,
since Paypal is a known-to-be-legal regulated subsidiary of a US Fortune 500
company and Bitcoin is Bitcoin.

2) Suppose you issue a US company an invoice for $10,000 and say "You can
settle this invoice in Bitcoin." How are they actually supposed to do that? My
impression is that the best option currently is to connect their bank account
to Coinbase (note: non-starter!), wait a few days for it to be connected, then
purchase $10k worth of Bitcoin at market price. $10k is +/\- 17 BTC, which
they won't actually be allowed to purchase in a day. It will actually take
four days of repeated work to buy that $10k of Bitcoin. Then they can actually
transfer it to you and, yay, you now have BTC.

3) But wait! What happens if the BTC price changes over the ~7 business days
it takes from the time your client starts taking action on your invoice to the
time they send you your BTC? Answer: somebody pays for this risk. _Volatility
is an implicit tax on transactions._ One of the parties is going to be short
BTC and one will be long BTC for the week, and given that BTC can _very
easily_ move 20% in a week, that means that your $10k invoice might be $8k or
$12k.

3a) Clients do not like when $10k invoices turn into $12k invoices because To
The Moon, Yo.

4) Suppose you have +/\- $10k worth of BTC. How do you solve the Last Quarter
Mile problem to your own bank account and/or local currency? Your options are
a) send the BTC to an unregulated exchange and accept counterparty/currency
risk (then hope that getting a large wire transfer from them doesn't cause
your bank to reevaluate how desirable your business is) or b) attempt to deal
with LocalBitcoins sellers multiple times, which apparently combines the
wonderful trust of the clandestine drug economy with the mind-altering
properties of currency exchanges.

4a) Time you spend on figuring out how to turn $10k of Internet money into
$10k of local currency is time you aren't spending lining up your next $10k
engagement.

5) If at any point you or one of your counterparties screw up in securing any
computer or trusting any member of the Bitcoin economy, your $10k vanishes
into the ether.

You should neither accept nor request BTC for professional services. They're
more expensive end-to-end than dealing with banks and expose you to multiple
unique sources of risk. You have plenty of risk in your business already, and
if your risk appetite is high, there are more lucrative forms of risk you can
"buy" than transacting in BTC, such as attempting to move your consulting
practice upmarket.

~~~
pmorici
I disagree. This was the state of things perhaps 1-2 years ago but this
doesn't represent the situation at all today.

Using a bitcoin payment processor like Bitpay you have zero exchange rate risk
and can receive payment in 9 different currencies in 33 countries.

Coinbases daily buy limit is $50,000 not 10k

You still have the computer security problem when you are using online banking
and any reputable Bitcoin company has as good or better security than a bank.
Two factor auth, and hardware tokens are the norm. I can't say the same for
most of the banks I've used.

~~~
vacri
_any reputable Bitcoin company has as good or better security than a bank._

Like Mt Gox? It was reputable enough to handle 2/3rds of all bitcoin
transactions.

Besides, if you're concerned about your banking, you can easily shop around
and find one with the hardware token security you like.

~~~
pmorici
Mt. Gox wasn't reputable and anyone willing to look would have seen that
disaster coming 6-9 months away at least. People were just being greedy
because of the higher BTC exchange rate there.

------
flanmaximondo
After months of frustration, I recently set up a way getting paid using credit
card via stripe through WordPress. Main advantage: knowing a deposit is paid
immediately. For whoever's interested, I did a write up on what I did on my
blog:

[http://trenvopress.com/2014/08/stripe-for-
freelancers/](http://trenvopress.com/2014/08/stripe-for-freelancers/)

~~~
tbarbugli
thats cool thanks for sharing this!

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zura
Sending invoices and getting paid by standard bank wire transfer.

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betadreamer
I actually use square cash and it's been great! No fees, it's simple. It's
good as long as your pay doesn't exceed the weekly limit. (2500)

------
oafitupa
Bitcoin.

