11-12-2024, 05:03 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-12-2024, 08:49 PM by Tiffany_Kx.)
If you have a start-up company or perhaps an established company and need to make international wire transfers and are paying for goods and services, you will have a unique financial service need beyond what your local bank can provide. When I started Bello Dynamic LLC, I not only had banking challenges with setting up a new account, but I also had the challenge of how I would be able to make bi-monthly payments to another country for the company that was providing business services for Bello Dynamic.
One of the challenges in opening a United States business bank account in Texas was the time commitment it took to open a new account, the needed paperwork requirement from both the Secretary of State where you created your business, your IRS (Internal Revenue Service) tax ID number. The big one was to verify the bank offered their services to ACH (Automatic Clearing House) funds to another country.
I was told when I opened my account I could ACH. The regional bank manager that was creating my account was misinformed and after two weeks of continual phone calls to different departments within this bank institution I learned that they couldn’t offer their ACH program to me.
Here are the issues I needed to resolve and satisfy to effectively do business with another country. I needed a bank to convert the funds before sending. This way, the business on the receiving end wouldn’t stand to lose a significant amount of payment for services due to the conversion after the payment is received. The second issue is that I needed a bank that could send internationally. This bank, no fault of their own, was only able to send to specific countries and their list was small. They could send to the country I needed the money wired to, but they would not convert the funds before sending. If conversion before sending wasn’t an issue, I could use their service, but I would also have to come in person to do so every time I had to do a wire transfer. When you are in business, time is money and making frequent trips to a bank every month was not an effective use of my time.
I continued my research with this bank where I just opened up my account because I kept being told they could offer the ACH services but after numerous phone calls to several different departments in this bank and waiting for phone calls to be returned, to only be told, I’d have to talk to another department, I learned that I could not use their ACH services from this bank as they were not available. You might be asking why being able to ACH is so important. The reason why is because I was going to have to make several wire transfers per month and if this bank could set me up on their program, I would only be charged about $40.00 per month, no matter how many transfers I had to make each month, including having the ability to take care of my transfers from home instead of in person at the bank. This is where Wise Financial services became my solution to wire funds internationally. Special thanks to Ric and Donna that helped guide me through this process. They recommended Wise, Remitly and World Remit. I chose to use Wise for a single reason and that is because they are not an app only service on your cell phone. With Wise, you can login to your dashboard on your PC. My thought was I needed a full dashboard to clearly see what I was doing to efficiently and safely send wire transfers.
What is Wise? Wise is a financial service that facilitates your ability to send and receive international payments that are otherwise not possible with your local bank. You might also be asking, why PayPal wasn't an option. The issue with PayPal is their fees to wire services are extremely high. Xoom which is part of PayPal is only for personal use wire transfers local to your country.
Setting up an account in Wise was routine for a personal account. While setting up a business account, Wise will require certain documents that include your Tax ID number and your state business registration. Since Wise is a financial institution that is required to meet certain standards by law, Wise will periodically reach out and require proof that your transfers are legitimate. I’ve had to send them numerous times copies of my invoices. I’ve also had to send them personal information on the recipient. Periodically they will send you questions that you are required to answer in a short period of time where they continue to verify you are a legitimate business as money laundering can be a big problem and they want to make sure you're legitimately paying for “goods and services”. I don’t think you will be able to get out of that intrusion in the other wire transfer companies. It’s likely very routine and lawfully required.
Another point to realize is that your funds being sent will not be received immediately. You will want to plan ahead when to send so your recipient receives their money in time. It’s usually a ten-to-fourteen-day transfer period from the funds taken out of my bank account to be received in the international account destination. This may vary for your process. Most importantly, I was able to set up an ACH account through Wise where they extract the funds out of my account. There was some set up required to create this service which included Wise sending small funds to test the account. Once they were satisfied and you were approved you were good to go. *Point to note is to ask if your bank also charges fees for you to wire from Wise. Your bank may have options for you to use Wise Services without being charged by the bank such as using a second account used only for sending wire transfers.
I can’t really provide screen shots because of the sensitive information in processing a wire transfer, but I will share instructions on how to wire funds.
• Login to your Wise account.
• Wise will send you an authentication code, then you will have full access to your Wise account.
• Choose the account you will be sending from (business or personal), then choose the recipient.
• A new screen will appear, and this is where you have the option to ACH, use a credit card, a debit card and some other choices.
• Add your funds, make your choice of how you are paying for the wire.
• Wise will convert the funds for you.
• Wise also takes out their fee percentage based on the amount your send and takes it out of the recipients funds.
• Verify you have the amount correct and then another screen will appear.
• They will ask you why you are sending this money?
• For me, it’s always “goods and services”.
• You have the option of detailing what this transfer is for and I always note the invoice information. You cannot use special characters in this section. I would type for example: Inv 1234 June 1 to June 15 2024
• Wise will then verify you want to send by ACH, credit card or whatever you chose and then you will put in your login password again. There is a fee for anything you do and it varies by what you are using to send.
• Important to note, the country you are sending too, may have restrictions on how much the recipient can receive, so you may need to make smaller payments.
• At this point you send.
• If you make a mistake before this point, you will have to cancel the transfer and start over. There is no clicking the back page to make a correction.
• Once you have sent you will have a link to send to your recipient to show their money was processed by you and Wise does the work from there. Wise will send you emails once your funds arrive at the recipient’s bank. *Your recipient benefits from the link you send them when you initiate the transfer so they can track the process. I always send that tracking information through email as confirmation.
Are there hiccups with this process? Yes, but very few. Wise lost funds once and there was a significant amount of communication to get these funds that were lost and resolved to resend a new wire. Their communication was stellar, and I never felt like they weren’t going to make this good. They took care of it. Sometimes, they have blocked a wire from processing more in the beginning of my new account because they wanted to verify the authenticity of my transfer.
In closing, points to remember are:
• Before you can open up a business bank account, in the United States, you must first apply to your SoS (Secretary of State) for your business name and get approval documents. (May take two weeks to a month)
• Before you open a business bank account in the United States, the second order of business is you must create your account with the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to receive your Tax ID number. (May take a week)
• Research your bank first. Can they ACH to another country and convert funds before sending? If you can’t ACH then you will want to choose a financial wire service that fits your needs.
• Does the financial service you are considering using offer a dashboard, good communication, phone number to call and quick services on issues?
• Is the wire service an app only or can you work on your account on your computer?
I hope my experience has enlightened you on the process of wiring funds to another country. I’ve been using Wise for a year now and I’d give them a good rating for their services thus far.
One of the challenges in opening a United States business bank account in Texas was the time commitment it took to open a new account, the needed paperwork requirement from both the Secretary of State where you created your business, your IRS (Internal Revenue Service) tax ID number. The big one was to verify the bank offered their services to ACH (Automatic Clearing House) funds to another country.
I was told when I opened my account I could ACH. The regional bank manager that was creating my account was misinformed and after two weeks of continual phone calls to different departments within this bank institution I learned that they couldn’t offer their ACH program to me.
Here are the issues I needed to resolve and satisfy to effectively do business with another country. I needed a bank to convert the funds before sending. This way, the business on the receiving end wouldn’t stand to lose a significant amount of payment for services due to the conversion after the payment is received. The second issue is that I needed a bank that could send internationally. This bank, no fault of their own, was only able to send to specific countries and their list was small. They could send to the country I needed the money wired to, but they would not convert the funds before sending. If conversion before sending wasn’t an issue, I could use their service, but I would also have to come in person to do so every time I had to do a wire transfer. When you are in business, time is money and making frequent trips to a bank every month was not an effective use of my time.
I continued my research with this bank where I just opened up my account because I kept being told they could offer the ACH services but after numerous phone calls to several different departments in this bank and waiting for phone calls to be returned, to only be told, I’d have to talk to another department, I learned that I could not use their ACH services from this bank as they were not available. You might be asking why being able to ACH is so important. The reason why is because I was going to have to make several wire transfers per month and if this bank could set me up on their program, I would only be charged about $40.00 per month, no matter how many transfers I had to make each month, including having the ability to take care of my transfers from home instead of in person at the bank. This is where Wise Financial services became my solution to wire funds internationally. Special thanks to Ric and Donna that helped guide me through this process. They recommended Wise, Remitly and World Remit. I chose to use Wise for a single reason and that is because they are not an app only service on your cell phone. With Wise, you can login to your dashboard on your PC. My thought was I needed a full dashboard to clearly see what I was doing to efficiently and safely send wire transfers.
What is Wise? Wise is a financial service that facilitates your ability to send and receive international payments that are otherwise not possible with your local bank. You might also be asking, why PayPal wasn't an option. The issue with PayPal is their fees to wire services are extremely high. Xoom which is part of PayPal is only for personal use wire transfers local to your country.
Setting up an account in Wise was routine for a personal account. While setting up a business account, Wise will require certain documents that include your Tax ID number and your state business registration. Since Wise is a financial institution that is required to meet certain standards by law, Wise will periodically reach out and require proof that your transfers are legitimate. I’ve had to send them numerous times copies of my invoices. I’ve also had to send them personal information on the recipient. Periodically they will send you questions that you are required to answer in a short period of time where they continue to verify you are a legitimate business as money laundering can be a big problem and they want to make sure you're legitimately paying for “goods and services”. I don’t think you will be able to get out of that intrusion in the other wire transfer companies. It’s likely very routine and lawfully required.
Another point to realize is that your funds being sent will not be received immediately. You will want to plan ahead when to send so your recipient receives their money in time. It’s usually a ten-to-fourteen-day transfer period from the funds taken out of my bank account to be received in the international account destination. This may vary for your process. Most importantly, I was able to set up an ACH account through Wise where they extract the funds out of my account. There was some set up required to create this service which included Wise sending small funds to test the account. Once they were satisfied and you were approved you were good to go. *Point to note is to ask if your bank also charges fees for you to wire from Wise. Your bank may have options for you to use Wise Services without being charged by the bank such as using a second account used only for sending wire transfers.
I can’t really provide screen shots because of the sensitive information in processing a wire transfer, but I will share instructions on how to wire funds.
• Login to your Wise account.
• Wise will send you an authentication code, then you will have full access to your Wise account.
• Choose the account you will be sending from (business or personal), then choose the recipient.
• A new screen will appear, and this is where you have the option to ACH, use a credit card, a debit card and some other choices.
• Add your funds, make your choice of how you are paying for the wire.
• Wise will convert the funds for you.
• Wise also takes out their fee percentage based on the amount your send and takes it out of the recipients funds.
• Verify you have the amount correct and then another screen will appear.
• They will ask you why you are sending this money?
• For me, it’s always “goods and services”.
• You have the option of detailing what this transfer is for and I always note the invoice information. You cannot use special characters in this section. I would type for example: Inv 1234 June 1 to June 15 2024
• Wise will then verify you want to send by ACH, credit card or whatever you chose and then you will put in your login password again. There is a fee for anything you do and it varies by what you are using to send.
• Important to note, the country you are sending too, may have restrictions on how much the recipient can receive, so you may need to make smaller payments.
• At this point you send.
• If you make a mistake before this point, you will have to cancel the transfer and start over. There is no clicking the back page to make a correction.
• Once you have sent you will have a link to send to your recipient to show their money was processed by you and Wise does the work from there. Wise will send you emails once your funds arrive at the recipient’s bank. *Your recipient benefits from the link you send them when you initiate the transfer so they can track the process. I always send that tracking information through email as confirmation.
Are there hiccups with this process? Yes, but very few. Wise lost funds once and there was a significant amount of communication to get these funds that were lost and resolved to resend a new wire. Their communication was stellar, and I never felt like they weren’t going to make this good. They took care of it. Sometimes, they have blocked a wire from processing more in the beginning of my new account because they wanted to verify the authenticity of my transfer.
In closing, points to remember are:
• Before you can open up a business bank account, in the United States, you must first apply to your SoS (Secretary of State) for your business name and get approval documents. (May take two weeks to a month)
• Before you open a business bank account in the United States, the second order of business is you must create your account with the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to receive your Tax ID number. (May take a week)
• Research your bank first. Can they ACH to another country and convert funds before sending? If you can’t ACH then you will want to choose a financial wire service that fits your needs.
• Does the financial service you are considering using offer a dashboard, good communication, phone number to call and quick services on issues?
• Is the wire service an app only or can you work on your account on your computer?
I hope my experience has enlightened you on the process of wiring funds to another country. I’ve been using Wise for a year now and I’d give them a good rating for their services thus far.
