How money from a foreign client actually reaches you

By Phan Trong Hung, who reads the fee pages line by line so you do not have to
Published 2026-08-29•Fee pages re-read at source 30 Aug 2026•How I check these numbers

There are two completely different ways money gets from a foreign client to you, and the difference between them is most of what you pay.

Almost nobody explains this, so people compare providers on the headline percentage and miss the thing that actually decides the cost.

Route 1: the international wire

Your client tells their bank to send money abroad. The bank pushes it through the SWIFT network, where it hops between correspondent banks until it reaches yours.

Each hop is a bank that can take a cut. Your client's bank charges a fee. Intermediary banks may deduct their own. Your bank charges to receive it, and converts to local currency at whatever rate it feels like that day.

Two things make this genuinely bad:

• Nobody can tell you the total in advance. Not your client, not their bank, not yours. You find out when it lands.
• The exchange rate is the biggest charge and it is invisible, because it is quoted as a rate rather than billed as a fee.

It is also slow - days, not hours - and if a detail is wrong somewhere in the chain, the money can sit in limbo while banks email each other about it.

Route 2: local account details

This is the one worth understanding.

A provider issues you real bank account details in the sender's own country. A US routing and account number. A UK sort code and account number. A euro IBAN.

Your client in the US sends a normal domestic US bank transfer to a US account number. As far as their bank is concerned, nothing crossed a border. No SWIFT, no correspondent banks, no chain of fees - because there was no international payment to price.

The money lands in your balance in the original currency. You convert it when you choose, at a rate you can see before you press the button, and withdraw to your local bank.

The trick is not a cheaper international transfer. It is not making an international transfer at all.

What it costs

From Wise's receiving page, checked 29 August 2026:

Note what this table is really saying: the same money costs nothing or 6.11 USD depending entirely on which route your client's bank uses. If your client sends a domestic ACH transfer to your US account details, it is free. If they insist on a wire, it is not.

That is worth one sentence in your invoice: "Please send this as a normal domestic transfer, not a wire."

Conversion is charged separately when you convert - a percentage shown to you before you confirm, against the mid-market rate. That transparency is the actual product. Compare it with PayPal's 3-4% markup buried inside the rate.

Who cannot get USD account details

This part matters, and most comparison articles skip it.

Wise's help page on USD account details lists 33 entries where USD account details are unavailable - 32 countries and regions plus the US state of Nevada - including Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkiye, the United Arab Emirates and China.

Vietnam does not appear on that exclusion list. Several countries this site is written for do: Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates are all on it. If you are reading this from Lagos, Karachi, Dhaka or Dubai, this specific route is closed to you at Wise - check what your alternatives offer before you spend an afternoon on signup. I would rather tell you that here than after you have filled in the forms.

This is the single most useful thing to check before choosing any provider: not the fee table, but whether the feature exists in your country at all. Every provider has a list like this. They are rarely on the marketing pages.

What to check before you sign up anywhere

In this order. The first three questions kill most options faster than any fee comparison:

1. Can someone resident in my country open this account at all?
2. Can I get account details in the currency my clients pay in? USD details are useless if your clients pay in euros.
3. Can I withdraw to a bank in my country, in my currency?
4. What does receiving cost - domestic, and by wire?
5. What is the conversion markup over mid-market?
6. What does the withdrawal cost?

Only questions 4 to 6 are about money. Questions 1 to 3 are about whether the thing works for you, and they are the ones people skip.

Where this leaves you

If your income arrives from clients, affiliate networks, marketplaces or platforms, this route is almost always the right answer, and the setup is an afternoon.

If you need to take card payments from strangers at checkout on your own store, this does not solve that - see Stripe and Shopify Payments do not work in Vietnam for why that is a separate problem.

One more thing worth knowing before you pick a provider. If the money you receive is also the money you spend - on ads, on software, on suppliers - then the account has a second job, and the two jobs have different requirements. A card that arrives with a receiving account is not automatically a card an ad platform will bill. That side is covered in why a card gets declined on Google Ads from Vietnam.

All figures from the linked provider pages, checked 29 August 2026. Fees and country lists change - open the sources before acting.

General information, not financial, tax or legal advice. I am not a licensed advisor. Fees and country rules change often - open the provider's own fee page and check before you move money.

Phan Trong HungI am based in Da Nang, Vietnam, and I get paid from abroad for a living — two years buying Meta ads for a client and running my own stores, which means moving money in and out of the country every month. This site is my working notes. I am not a banker and I have not opened every account here, so instead of asking you to take my word for anything, I quote the provider’s own published page, link it, and date it. If a number is not from first-hand use, the post says so. CV · LinkedIn · Portfolio