Business Bank Account for Receiving Money from Abroad

mulletron

Hi,

I currently run a small (1 person) business and have non-UK based clients. I'm currently doing my business banking with RBS because its mostly free, but they charge me to receive money from abroad.

I would really like to receive money from abroad without fees being an issue and without being penalised by the exchange rate. I've seen a few personal "money transfer" services, but I really want to be able to invoice my clients with a regular IBAN number and have it looks like a professional bank account.

Does anyone have a suggestion for how to solve this problem?

grumbler

Don't know about the fees for business accounts, but you can't avoid "being penalised by the exchange rate".

I guess you can invoice your clients in ££ and they will take the hit on their side.

mulletron

Sorry - by "penalised by the exchange rate" what I mean is that the Bank itself has a spread over the exchange rate. So they're making the exchange rate a few percent worse from my point of view and pocketing the difference. I was wondering if anyone knew of any business accounts that were better at this?

grumbler

All banks charge for the conversion. The difference, if any, will be very small.

benjus

If you have a lot of clients that pay in the same currency (e.g. EUR or USD) it might be worth getting an account in that currency so that you can manage the conversion to Sterling yourself. But if you're getting lots of payments in all sorts of different currencies there's not much you can do.