Ask HN: What's the best way to receive money internationally? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's the best way to receive money internationally?

9 pointscrgt15 comments

We're considering PayPal (but have heard the horror stories about holds on larger amounts) or a wire transfer (but would prefer not to provide our routing and account number). 10K+. Would love to hear the community's suggestions.

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In the past I've done similar amounts using a wire transfer service like Travelex ... from memory, it was a fixed fee (not a % commission) & the exchange rate was good. You just pay them cash over the counter.

The exchange rate is where standard banks often make a killing when doing a wire transfer.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll check 'em out. I was secretly hoping that there was some awesome YC-backed start-up that's nailing this problem that I'd missed..but this looks like it may be helpful.

Why wouldn't you want to provide your routing number and account number? You give them out every time you write a check. Wire transfers are probably the only good option here.

Because there are places where that's all it takes to spend money. I trust our clients..but you never know..especially when dealing with an international client you've never met.

Create a checking account just for this purpose. Only use it for holding transfers. It takes about ten minutes to setup a new account at most banks.

This is what we've landed on as a default - just seems kinda wonky. As if MacGuyver were handling our incoming $ or something.

I don't know how this would work with international but I think knightsbridgefx.com is a good option.

They do currency conversions through bank accounts. So you save $ on the exchange + you get the money wired. Minimum is 10k so this might fit the bill.

Where are you sending/receiving from?

Found this http://saasy.com/matrix.php

This is interesting. Has anyone used them?

Try Stripe, i've heard many people consider it instead of Paypal.

Unfortunately AFAIK Stripe is still limited to US and a few others I think, Beta in Canada. No Europe. This is quite a limiting factor.

Would love to use them. But they don't support everywhere we need to be.

The bank account which is linked to the stripe account have to be in the US. But as far as I know they are accepting CC from all around the world. If you are sitting in the US and you just want receive Money from everywhere, than stripe is a good option. At least if you are dealing with small amount of Money. As far as I know stripe takes some percentage from the transaction. For big transactions, like 10K USD, I wouldn't recommend it.

for Europe based transaction try Transferwise https://transferwise.com

I've used Transpact for international payment.

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