16 articles
A designer in Warsaw invoices a startup in Austin. The payment arrives in her wallet in three minutes. She holds it in dollars. When she is ready, she converts to zloty on her own terms. Nobody approved the transfer. Nobody held the funds in between. The dollars moved from one wallet to another, and she […]
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A salaried employee’s bank account tells one story, twelve times a year: same employer, same amount, same date. Yours tells a different one — four clients, three platforms, two currencies, amounts that double in a good month and halve in a slow one, and a wire from a country your bank’s risk model has opinions […]
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Your invoice said $4,000. Your account says $3,790. No line item explains the missing $210. If you earn from clients in another country, this happens on every single payment — and the largest piece of it is usually a fee you will never see on a receipt. It’s called the FX markup, and in 2026 […]
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You invoice a US client for $5,000. They pay promptly. You check your local bank account three days later and find $4,780. Where did $220 go? Nobody stole it. No single fee explains it. The money was carved up by a stack of intermediaries, each taking a small cut that feels invisible until you add […]
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If you earn in USD but live outside the United States, you’ve probably run into this problem: your client pays you $5,000 via ACH, and by the time the money lands in your local bank account, somewhere between $75 and $250 has vanished into conversion fees, intermediary charges, and exchange rate markups you never agreed […]
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If you work internationally, you deal with multiple currencies. A client in New York pays in USD. A project in Berlin pays in EUR. You live in Mexico City and spend in MXN. Managing three currencies across three platforms with three fee structures is a mess. Multi-currency accounts consolidate this. One platform, multiple currency balances, […]
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Receiving US dollars when you are based in Latin America should not be complicated. You did the work, the client wants to pay, and the only question is: where do they send the money? The answer depends on your situation – how much you receive, how often, whether you want to hold USD or convert […]
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PayPal dominates online payments, but for freelancers in Latin America, the relationship is often adversarial. Fund holds lasting 21 days on new accounts. FX markups of 3-4% above mid-market rates. Limited ability to withdraw to local banks in some countries. And the ever-present risk of account limitations that freeze your funds with vague explanations and […]
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Skrill has been around since 2001 (originally as Moneybookers). It built its reputation in online gambling payments, expanded into general e-commerce, and is now owned by Paysafe Group. Skrill serves 40+ million customers and operates in 200+ countries. But Skrill’s age shows in its fee structure. What was once competitive has become a maze of […]
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If you have spent any time in online communities for non-US founders, you have seen this advice: “Use Stripe Atlas to form a Delaware LLC, then open Mercury for banking.” It is repeated so often it sounds like the only path. And for some people, it is the right path. But for many others, it […]
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