If you’re like many of the regional banks we work with, you’re likely avoiding the conversation about international payments with your commercial customers because you don’t have an impactful and practical solution to offer them. This means that while they might do most of their business with you, they’re doing international payments at a competitor. And eventually, that competitor will try to capture all of your customer’s business.
Offering international payments allows you to keep more customers in your ecosystem. It gives you a competitive advantage to have conversations that other regional banks simply can’t have with your customers. You can add value to your customer relationships by offering them a service they can’t get elsewhere and providing a tool that saves them time and money.
Here’s how offering the ability to send in local currency can benefit your commercial customers:
Sending in USD
When a customer pays in USD, additional correspondent banks are involved in the transaction. This creates:
- Potential delivery delays
- Higher fees
- Reduced settlement amounts to overseas vendors
When a payment is sent overseas as USD, the recipient’s bank will often charge a higher fee to convert dollars into local currency, which is passed on to the recipient. As a result, vendors often mark up prices to compensate for the extra fees they incur by converting payments.
Sending in Local Currency
How to Add Value to Customer Relationships:
You can add value to customer relationships by allowing them to send in local currency. When you send in local currency, you:
- Control the exchange rate
- Save money – Often, vendors will mark up invoices 10-20% to account for extra fees and conversion rates
- Eliminate potential delays – fewer parties means less opportunity for your payment to get delayed
How to Identify Opportunities
If you already offer PayRecs to your customers, you can identify opportunities to improve customer relationships by checking your customers’ websites for:
- Offices located in other countries
- International customers/vendors
- The words “global” or “international.”
- Dual language options for text on their site
- Supported currencies at check-out (if applicable)
Sending money in local currency saves your customers time and money. Educating them on the benefits of sending in local currency gives you a competitive advantage, helps you keep current customers and win new relationships.