On Tuesday, September 24 at 12:00 noon New York time, Eve Bodeux and I will host the next in our series of free Speaking of Translation conference calls. This edition’s topic is International payments: an overview, and if you send or receive payments across borders, you should definitely listen in! The call will last 30-45 minutes, it’s totally free other than any phone call charges (and no sales pitches for any of our services), and you can even submit questions for Eve to answer. Here’s the full description:
Call description: It costs money to make money, but in this call we’ll help you figure out how to spend as little as possible on international payments while keeping as much as possible in your pocket. Eve Bodeux, a frequent speaker on the topic of international payments, discussed this with Speaking of Translation back in 2009 and there have been some (good and bad) changes since then. She will fill us in on the pros and cons of current options including ACH, wire transfers, foreign bank accounts, checks, international currency transfer services and PayPal. She’ll also discuss some considerations related to exchange rates and taxes. If time allows, we’ll take questions from the audience.
As an added bonus, Eve and Corinne will preview the upcoming American Translators Association annual conference, which will be held from November 6-9 in San Antonio, Texas.
To join the call: A few minutes before 12:00 noon New York time, dial 209-647-1600, then enter access code 178865 and press pound (#). If you live outside the U.S. or if you pay by the minute for long-distance calling, the least expensive option is probably to purchase Skype credits and use the Skype “Call Phones” function. This should cost less than 3 US cents per minute.
In addition, you can listen to the archives of our Speaking of Translation podcast and conference calls for free at any time. No charge, no sales pitches, just fun discussions about translation industry topics!
I hope to be there if I can find out how what the Skype “Call Phones” function is and how to buy those “Skype credits” :).
Here’s the link for you! http://www.skype.com/en/features/call-phones-and-mobiles/
If you are based in the US, an even better method of avoiding charges is to join the call using Google Voice, which enables you to make intra-US calls (including ones to cellphones, plus calls to Canada) completely gratis if you are using a landline to place the call. Signing up to the service also costs nothing.
Non-US residents can also use Google Voice if they have a Gmail account (though those users will have to pay a modest call charge of 1 cent per minute when calling a US number — and possibly a local sales tax).
US-based callers placing calls from their cellphones may or may not end up being charged. Their calls will use the standard minutes from their cellphone plan. If they happen to be overseas at the time of their call, they will be charged the relevant Google Voice international rate (for calls to the US, this is 1 cent per minute plus any applicable overseas sales tax), and possibly international roaming fees.
Figuring it all out can get complicated, and you will probably need to play about with the service a bit and make the effort to persevere through Google’s somewhat vague and scattered descriptions of its own service. My summary is based partly on my own experience of making calls from the US, and partly on my understanding (which may be faulty) of Google’s own information.
Regardless, I have found that the potential savings to be made with Google Voice can be considerable, especially if you make a significant number of calls to overseas destinations.
Like! Put it on my calendar.
Hi Corinne,
I try to avoid PayPal as much as possible (3.9% adds up quickly), and have found the cheapest way to get money from the US to Canada is snail-mailing old-fashioned checks (which absolutely boggles my mind this day and age). Within Canada, you have the free Interac e-Transfer, and it’s generally free to wire money intra-Europe. My biggest challenge is getting USD into my European USD bank account. I’ve found scores of online services willing to transfer the money abroad significantly cheaper than wire-transfers (e.g. canadianforex.com), but they all insist on *converting the currency* because that’s where they make their money, and I can’t figure out a way (other than wire transfer and its associated impossible-to-predict-but-at-least-around-$20-fee) to get USD from my Canadian USD account to my European USD account.
I’ve finally opened a “Simple” US account, in the hopes that it helps me with this, but it’s an avenue I still have to explore.
If Eve or you have any insights on this issue, I’d be all ears to hear your suggestions!
And +1 to Erik, I agree Google Voice is generally cheaper than Skype, because they don’t have the pesky connection fee. 🙂
Also – Corinne – I wish you could have planned the call a few hours later than noon (2pm?) in order to cater to those of us in Europe who aren’t really morning people 🙂 But I’ll try to make this one in any case.
Have a great day!
Marc
My god – I’m embarrassed and sorry – noon is actually 6pm here. That’s perfect. Please just completely disregard my ignorant lack of time-zone direction computation this morning… !!!
I’d be interested in hearing about people’s experiences using Skrill.com for making international transfers. I have a Skrill (previously Moneybookers) account tied to my US bank account which for a long time I was never able to use, because for some reason Moneybookers decided that it would not permit transfers from Europe to the US (!). That restriction now seems to have been lifted.
Another issue with Skrill is that they only allow you to tie your user ID to a single account, so if you need to transfer money in two directions you will have to find another channel for the second direction. (And they prohibit multiple IDs / accounts.)
After listening to Eve’s ATA presentation on this topic a couple of years ago, I opened a EUR bank account in France and have all my Europe-based clients pay me in EUR into this account (no charge to them since within Europe). I then use a currency exchange service (XE) to transfer EUR from my account in France into my USD account in the USA. They do not charge a fee, but make their money on the spread (about 2% over mid-market exchange rates). I am very happy with this set up and pretty much never use PayPal anymore.
Thanks Joanne!
Thank you, Joanne, for that feedback! That is my ideal of how it will work. So great to hear that it worked out so well for you. I think, as you say, it important too, to make it easy for your clients (let them pay you how they are comfortable on their end). XE is another currency exchange service to consider, in place of one of the foreign exchange companies I mentioned on the call.
To Marc: yes the foreign exchange companies do not love USD to USD transactions. I normally mention that, but we were already getting pretty detailed for a “short” call so left that part out in the call this time. In any case, it is, as Joanne alludes, to because they cannot make any money on the spread. Some of them, like Western Union, will do it for you. I think Cambridge will too, for a per transaction fee as well, but I am not sure. You will have to ask them. I negotiated a $15 fee with Western Union to initiate an international USD to USD transfer, with the recipient paying no fee to receive. So, kind of like a wire, but not (somewhat less fees)…So, in this case, you’d be the sender and the recipient (since you are sending money between your own bank accounts). Hope that is of some help.
Hi Eve,
Many thanks for taking the time to reply to my request, and for the tip. I’ll look into Western Union and let you know how it goes!
Cheers,
Marc