If you are an internet freelancer, blogger or entrepreneur, then you’ve likely run into the issue of running an international business. The internet is providing more and more opportunities to operate internationally. As we operate our businesses globally there are times that we run into boundary issues with money.
I’m talking about international money transfer.
When I first started blogging, I didn’t think much about how I might be dealing with partners from other countries. Luckily, many of the typical accounts that we use such as paypal has built in transfer options for transfering money internationally. Typically you will have to deal with some fees or an internationally exchange rate, but in most cases this is handled seamlessly.
However, there are some issues that one should be aware of when dealing with partners and other businesses overseas. First off, I do recommend internet entrepreneurs to set up a paypal account. It is one of the most popular online payment methods and for the most part everything is handled seamlessly without much problems. However, paypal doesn’t solve all problems.
I’ve recently encountered inquiries from potential sponsors from other countries such as India that is not paypal friendly. India in particular doesn’t allow international money transfers through paypal. In this case, you may need to make special arrangements. You can open an account with another money transfer service that operates in that country or perhaps engage an invoicing service that can act as a go between to get paid from these other countries.
A secondary issue that I’ve run into with paypal is that their fees are sometimes higher than other methods such as a straight bank transfer. I ran into this issue when my wife started her ecommerce animal beanie hat business.
We were buying wholesale from China and discovered that the fees for an international money transfer to China at the time were more expensive through paypal.
- Check the fees and see if there are discounts at different amounts of transfer. Sometimes the fees are less if you transfer larger amounts.
- If you are able, send dollars to dollars and have the recipiend convert the money to their local currency.
- Look for deals on the transfer. Some banks give discount on fees if you meet certain conditions on the money transfer.
- Avoid transfering too often in small amounts. If you know that you will be transfering money regularly to the same people, perhaps you can add it up and send larger amounts to avoid fees.
- How quickly does the money need to get there? It costs more to send money faster.
