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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Presumably you've got a UK bank account, so you can just use that and take on the currency risk and transaction fees of Wise or similar?

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If you have a USD-denominated bank account, based in UK or elsewhere, you’ll be hit with the 1% fee.

If you have a bank account in another currency, you’ll be charged a 2% currency conversion fee from USD to your currency.

I dont know if it’s common in other countries, but Canadian banks offer USD denominated accounts. From the wording, it seems like only if you are paying USD into a US bank account you pay the fee. Presumably paying USD into a non US bank account (in USD) wouldn’t incur this fee. At least I’d hope so!

Hmm, you’re right about the wording, but the alternate currencies page doesn’t seem to differentiate between where the bank account is based:

https://stripe.com/docs/payouts/alternative-currencies

Here in Australia we’re charged the 1% fee for USD payouts even though the account is with a local bank.

We use Wise but their USD accounts are US-domiciled. So we have 3 options: - Continue paying out to Wise and incur an additional 1% fee (~$30k per year) - Use Stripe for currency conversion which is additional 2% fee (~$60k per year - Find a UK-domiciled USD account to pay out to. Might be possible - no idea really. Need to look into it.

> Find a UK-domiciled USD account to pay out to. Might be possible - no idea really. Need to look into it.

FWIW one of these was readily available from my existing bank (Barclays) last time I needed one (~10yrs ago). Bit of hoop-jumping to go through, but definitely worth it for $30k/year.

Thanks, we'll speak with Barclays then :)

Won't work. It's easy to get a USD bank with Barclays or other UK banks, but Stripe are still adding this 1% fee to pay out $USD wherever it goes.

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