What is a Foreign Exchange fee and how much is it?
The Foreign Exchange (FX) fee is a fee that is added to your invoices when you get paid internationally using one of our online payment methods. This fee is 2.5% of your invoice amount.
You will know when this fee applies, as it will be displayed on the invoice itself. You can see from the image below what this fee looks like, from someone who is in the United Kingdom, charging USD for their invoice:
What is an international payment?
This is determined based on the contractor's payment country vs the currency of the invoice that was sent to the client. The payment country is the country you set up when initially activating the payments section.
If the contractor's payment country's currency is the same as Invoice currency this isn't considered an international payment. For example, if the payment country is the United States and the invoice currency is USD, then it's not considered as an international payment. In this case, the FX fee isn't applied.
If the contractor's payment country's currency is different from Invoice currency then this is considered an international payment. For example, the payment country is the United Kingdom and the invoice currency is USD, then it is considered as an international payment. In this case, the FX fee is applied.
How can you avoid the foreign exchange fee (FX fee)?
If a contractor doesn't want to be charged any FX fee, then they need to always send the invoice in the same currency of their country.
For example:
If Country = US ⇒ Invoice currency should be USD
If Country = CA ⇒ Invoice currency should be CAD
If Country = AU ⇒ Invoice currency should be AUD
If Country = GB ⇒ Invoice currency should be GBP
For more information regarding other fees, such as the fees that are applied when using payment processors, refer to this article here.