Getting Paid Across Borders — Banking as a Nomad

The first international invoice I sent was for $600. I received $541. Nobody stole anything; the money just passed through four places and each one took a bite, and I couldn't reconstruct where most of it went.

That gap is the entire subject of this post. Follow one payment from a client's bank to a noodle stall in Da Nang and there are five hops, each with a fee, and most of them are optional if you set things up once.

I'm writing this from an Indian perspective, because almost everything published about this assumes you hold a US or EU passport, and the rules that apply to me are not the rules that apply to them.

Hop 1: the invoice

The fee starts before the money moves.

Quote in USD, always. Not INR, not the client's local currency unless it's USD. USD is what the rails are cheapest in and what your client expects. This connects directly to how you price the work — a number you invented in rupees and converted will look strange and negotiable.

Put the transfer fee in the contract. One line: "All bank charges, including intermediary and correspondent bank fees, are borne by the client." Without it, the default on a SWIFT wire is SHA, where charges are shared, and "shared" in practice means deductions appear from banks you have never heard of. With OUR specified and the clause in writing, the client's bank absorbs them.

Invoice timing matters more than you'd think. USD/INR can move 1–2% in a month. On a $9,000 project that's up to ₹15,000 of pure noise. I don't try to time it, but I don't sit on a signed invoice for three weeks either.

Hop 2: the rail

This is where most of the money is won or lost.

Bank wire / SWIFT. Works everywhere, understood by every finance department, and expensive in two hidden ways. Intermediary banks in the correspondent chain deduct $15–30 each and you have no visibility into how many there are. Worse, your receiving bank converts USD to INR at its own rate, typically 1.5–2.5% off mid-market. On $5,000 that's $75–125 in FX alone, invisible because it's baked into the rate rather than shown as a fee. For an enterprise client that insists on wires, fine. Otherwise it's my last choice.

Wise. Generally the best transparent option. Real mid-market rate, fee stated up front, usually well under 1% all-in. The important caveat for Indians: what Wise supports for receiving into India is not the same as what it supports elsewhere, and business-versus-personal receiving, supported currencies, and the documentation you get have all changed over time. Verify what your account actually supports today rather than trusting a blog post — including this one.

Payoneer. Popular with Indian freelancers and reasonable. You get receiving accounts in USD/EUR/GBP, clients pay them as if domestic, you withdraw to your Indian account. The withdrawal markup is typically around 2%: better than SWIFT, worse than Wise. Its real strength is that some marketplaces and larger clients pay Payoneer natively.

PayPal. Avoid for anything meaningful. The FX spread is the worst of the lot, often 3–4% on top of the transaction fee, and the fees compound with cross-border surcharges. On a $5,000 invoice you can lose $250–350. Fine for a $200 fix. Not for project work.

Stripe or Razorpay. The right answer for productised or recurring work: a subscription product, a template, a small SaaS. Card processing runs roughly 2.9% plus a fixed fee and a cross-currency charge, which is unattractive for one large invoice and perfectly fine when the alternative is not getting paid because the customer only has a card. Read the integration mistakes that cost me money first.

Crypto. People will suggest stablecoins. Skip it. For legitimate invoicing it creates more problems than it solves: you still have to convert to fiat somewhere, that conversion needs to be explainable, Indian rules around virtual digital assets carry their own tax treatment, and you lose the clean paper trail that makes the next section possible. The 1% you might save is not worth a conversation with a tax officer.

Hop 3: receiving into India, and the paperwork

This is the part that's specific and that people ignore until it bites.

Foreign inward remittance into an Indian account generates documentation, and you want it. Historically that's the FIRC (Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate); most banks now issue an electronic FIRA or an advice statement instead. It is your evidence that money arriving in your account is export-of-services income and not something else.

You want this for tax filing, for claiming any export-related benefits you're eligible for, and if anyone ever asks questions. Some banks issue it automatically, some make you request it per transaction, some charge a fee. Ask what the process is before the first payment lands, not eighteen months later when you need twelve of them at once.

Indian regulations around foreign receipts, reporting and the tax treatment of export services are strict and they change. I'm a developer, not an accountant. Get a CA who has actually handled freelance export income, not a generalist. Mine costs a few thousand rupees a year and has saved multiples of that.

Hop 4: converting, and the buffer

Don't convert everything the moment it arrives. I keep a rolling USD buffer covering roughly two months of expenses and convert the rest as needed. This isn't speculation; it's that converting USD to INR to VND is two spreads instead of one.

Hop 5: spending it abroad

• Cards without a forex markup. Most Indian debit and credit cards charge 3–3.5% on foreign transactions. That's ₹3,500 on every ₹1,00,000 spent, for nothing. A Wise or Niyo-type multi-currency card removes it. Check current terms; issuers change these often.
• ATM strategy. Fewer, larger withdrawals. Local ATM operators charge a flat fee per withdrawal regardless of amount, so five small withdrawals cost five times as much as one. Always decline "conversion to your home currency" at the ATM. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is theft.
• Two cards, two networks. One Visa, one Mastercard, from two different banks, kept in two different places. Cards get blocked by fraud systems for the crime of being used in Vietnam, and the phone call to unblock one takes a day.

Every rule here has a country and a date attached. This is not financial or tax advice, regulations differ by where you're resident, and mine change often enough that I re-check annually. Pay a professional. It's the cheapest line item in the chain.