How to pay international vendors,
and what each way costs

An invoice in euros paid from a dollar account is converted by your bank, by a transfer service or by the supplier's bank, and each prices it twice: as a fee you can see and as a rate you have to check against the mid-market rate.

Bank of America charges no wire fee on an international wire sent in a foreign currency and says on the same page that exchange rate markups apply. Decide who converts before the first invoice, and write it into the terms.

A wire passes through your bank, sometimes one or two intermediary banks, and the supplier's bank. The charge code on the wire decides who carries their fees: OUR means you pay all of them, SHA means each side pays its own bank, BEN means the supplier carries them.

With SHA, an intermediary's deduction lands on the supplier, and the invoice arrives back short. Agree the code with the supplier, then use it every time.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center describes business email compromise as a scam aimed at businesses that work with suppliers and regularly pay by wire. Its usual shape is an email, from the supplier's real or lookalike address, with new bank details.

Take the details once, check them by calling the supplier on a number you already had, and treat any later change as a new payee. The page on duplicate and fraudulent invoices has the rest of that playbook.

A US business paying a foreign company usually asks for Form W-8BEN-E; a foreign individual gives W-8BEN. The supplier's country has its own rules for receiving money from abroad and for the invoice itself. None of this is tax advice; it is the shape of the problem, and the call is your accountant's.

Bank of America charges $45 to send an international wire in US dollars; in a foreign currency there is no wire fee, but exchange rate markups apply. An inbound wire may cost the receiver $15 at that bank, and an outbound international wire typically arrives in 1 to 5 business days.

Wells Fargo lists $30 for a wire sent online and $40 from a branch, and says it makes money when it converts currencies. Mercury lists $0 for international wires in US dollars and a 1% currency exchange fee on the rest.

Swift says nearly 60% of payments over Swift GPI are credited within 30 minutes and almost 100% within 24 hours. A wire is right for one large payment, a goods order with a deposit, or a supplier whose bank nothing else reaches.

In Orla the payment is proposed, passes the rule and leaves from your bank.

Where the space has the connection switched on, a connected Mercury account gets it as a request in Mercury's own approval queue, in US dollars only, with non-US payees paid by international wire; from Slash, an international wire is sent in Slash itself, because it needs a purpose code from the payee's bank.

Sending money abroad costs from 0.23%, the fee varies by currency, and Wise says it does not inflate the mid-market rate. Opening the business account is a one-time 31 USD. It is right for regular invoices in many currencies, paid into the supplier's own local account.

Orla does not connect to Wise: the payment is proposed and signed in Orla as your record, then made in Wise by whoever holds the Wise login, and the Wise statement for the month is imported against that account, so the bill still closes on the money that left.

The signatures are your rule on paper here, not a lock on Wise.

Airwallex lists free domestic transfers in US and Canadian dollars, $15 to $25 for a SWIFT transfer (SHA and OUR), and conversion at 0.5% above interbank rates for major currencies and 1.0% for the rest, with an Explore plan at $0 per user a month.

The point of a multi-currency account is to pay a euro invoice from a euro balance you already hold, with no conversion on the day. In Orla each currency pocket of a connected Airwallex or Revolut Business account is its own account.

Where a space has Airwallex payouts switched on, Orla prepares the payments as a draft batch in Airwallex; Revolut gets a draft once Orla has seen your Revolut IP allowlist hold. Either way someone on your team submits and approves them there; Orla asks Revolut only for the right to read and to prepare, never to send.

For the supplier who invoices through PayPal. On PayPal's business fees page a commercial payment received from another market adds 1.50% to the supplier's own receiving rate.

Currency conversion costs 3.00%, or 4.00% when paying for goods or services in a currency other than the one they are listed in, and on a payout the recipient receives in another currency. PayPal Payouts abroad cost 2% of the amount, capped at 20 USD for a US dollar payout.

So a PayPal invoice is convenient and rarely the cheap way; ask whether the supplier takes a bank transfer too. In Orla a connected PayPal Payouts balance is an account you pay from, and an approved payout leaves on a press.

For the supplier who asks to be paid on chain. Etherscan's gas tracker at 01:09 UTC on 23 October 2026 priced a USDT transfer on Ethereum at $0.006 at 0.044 gwei.

On TRON the latest confirmed USDT transfers used 64,285 energy to an address that already held USDT and 130,285 to one that held none; at the network's energy price of 100 sun a unit, a wallet without staked energy burns about 6.4 or 13 TRX, roughly $2.11 or $4.28 at that hour's TRX price.

The real cost sits with the supplier, turning tokens into money through an exchange and a bank. A transfer cannot be recalled, and the issuer can freeze an address.

In Orla the run sends every approved payment of one wallet in one sitting, offers to screen any address with no check from the last month (each check is paid for), and puts the transaction id on the payment. Which coin to use is its own question: USDC vs USDT.

A wire in the supplier's currency, with the charge code agreed (OUR if the invoice must arrive whole), or a conversion in a transfer service first and a local payment second. On a large amount the rate matters more than the fee: half a percent on 50,000 is 250.

A transfer service or a multi-currency account. A flat $45 wire on a 400 invoice is more than 11% of it; a percentage fee is not.

Pay through PayPal if that is the only way they take, and know that both of you pay a percentage. Ask once whether a bank transfer works.

A stablecoin transfer costs cents to a few dollars and arrives in minutes. Pay the address the supplier gave you on the network they named, screen it, and remember that nothing can be recalled.

Ask five things and compare the answers side by side: the fee per payment, the rate against the mid-market rate on a named day, who pays intermediary banks, how long a payment takes to the supplier's country, and what the supplier receives for an invoice of a size you actually pay.

A quote that answers only the first one is a quote for the cheapest line on the screen.

A bill comes in as a draft read from the supplier's PDF, mailed in or uploaded, or is typed in by hand. Entering the same supplier and invoice number twice is refused, whichever way each one arrived, because one supplier invoice is one debt.

Bank details are never asked for or stored on a bill; paying it reads them from the supplier's contact card. A bank rail is a form with a scheme, SEPA and IBAN, UK sort code, US ACH, or SWIFT for everywhere else, and an IBAN or a US routing number with two digits swapped is refused as it is typed.

Instead of copying details from an email, you can send the supplier a link where they type their own: it works once and for seven days.

When Orla sends or drafts a payment to a supplier you have paid before, on details they were never paid on, the payment waits, even with all its signatures, until someone confirms the new details.

The person who proposed it cannot be the one who confirms, unless they are the only person who can sign; the check is a call to the supplier on a number you already had.

Payments above a threshold need the number of signatures the rule asks for, and whoever proposes a payment cannot sign it themselves. A payout run is checked on its total. On a rail Orla sends or drafts, the rule holds the payment; on a rail you pay by hand, it records who signed.

Revolut Business gets a draft your team sends there, once Orla has seen your Revolut IP allowlist hold; PayPal Payouts sends on a press; a wallet sends from the run screen.

Where a space has them switched on, Mercury gets a request into its own approval queue, Airwallex a draft batch your team sends there, and Slash sends ACH and domestic wires on a press and leaves international wires to Slash itself.

Where a space has it (it is being switched on space by space, on paid plans), an account inside Orla pays a supplier's bank too: its bank details pay into USDC in your own wallet, a payment goes out in the currency the supplier's details are in, and before you press it shows what the supplier receives and each fee as its own line.

Each payment carries who proposed and who signed, the bank's reference or the chain's hash, and the supplier's invoice number when it settles a bill.

When the bank charge that paid a bill reaches the ledger with the same amount to the cent, the same currency and a payee that looks like the supplier, the bill closes on it by itself, so it is not paid a second time on its due date; a less certain match waits for you to pick it.