Transferring money inside the EU has low transfer fees – free, or at least under €1 is typical. 🇪🇺
But when transferring money from within the EU (where we are based) to countries outside the EU, bank fees are no joke. 💰
First, our bank charges a fee for sending an international money transfer – no worries, we always pay for that, so your bank receives the full amount you’re due. For example;
You’re due €500 and live in Canada. 🇨🇦
Our bank charges us a fee of €14 for sending money to Canada. We’ll “send” €514 and the €14 will be deducted before the money leaves our bank.
Our bank will send you the full €500 you’re due. 💸
But your non-EU bank will charge for receiving an international money transfer (often called a “wire”) from a bank in a different country (because banks are assholes 😶). To continue the Canadian example from above;
Your Canadian bank receives the €500 we sent, and looks at your banking profile (when you set up your bank account, you signed an agreement regarding bank fees). Your bank calculates the fees to charge – turns out to be CA$18.50 in this case. 🤬
So, first your bank converts the €500 we sent to Canadian dollars, that’s CA$737.21 (the specific conversion rate changes a little each day, more info). Then, your bank deducts the CA$18.50 fee, so you get CA$718.71 in your bank account. 🙂
You can do a Google search for “ fees for receiving international wire transfers” to find what will be the case for you, for example:
wells fargo fees for receiving international wire transfers
You’ll usually have to dig a bit to find the info you need. Alternately you can call your bank and ask this exact question;
You’re an international payments expert. What fees am I charged by you and any intermediary banks, when I receive Euro sent from the Netherlands, to my bank account?
By asking this specific question, we cover all possible factors. Unfortunately, front-line customer service people at smaller banks are not equipped to answer this question correctly. If they demur or seem unsure, ask to speak to an international payments expert.
Bank fees are almost always “flat” (that is, the fee is the same if we send €100 or €1,000 or €10,000), so it’s better to make fewer transactions of higher amounts (for example, for all the work you did in a week of shoots, instead of payment for each shoot individually) – that way we both lose less in bank fees. We’ll always do this by default, unless you tell us otherwise.
Intermediary bank fees
As you learnt on our page for finding the necessary bank information, sometimes an intermediary bank is used (where the money goes from our bank, to the intermediary bank, then to your bank). Intermediary banks may also charge a fee (or, they may not).
In our experience, Intermediary bank fees can be between US$0 and US$75, with US$20 being most common. But, this is set by your bank, so you need to ask them to be sure.
What if I don’t want to pay bank fees?
No one likes bank fees, but they are almost unavoidable.
Some modern payment methods have very low fees – Paxum is a good example, but there can be fees for withdrawing money from Paxum to actually be able to spend it, depending on where you live.
You may be able to change the type of bank account you have, to one with lower fees – worth asking if you plan to do a lot of work for companies in other countries.
You may want to change banks – banks often have discounts for things like fees, but you’ll need to check the fine print.
