Running an export business or freelancing for international clients isn’t just about getting paid — it’s about proving you got paid. You send an invoice, the client pays, the money lands — and just when you exhale, your accountant says, > “We still need the FIRC.” You blink. The what? That’s the moment every Indian
You don’t lose money on Upwork.You lose it on the way home. A $1,000 project turns into $970 by the time Payoneer finishes “processing.”Wise hides its cut inside the FX rate — no line item, just a smaller number.And SWIFT? It still believes your money should stop for tea at every correspondent bank along the
Fiverr speaks in Dollars and Indian banks listen in Rupees.Everything in between is translation. Dollars become data, data becomes transfers and transfers become Rupees.And somewhere along the way, Fiverr sends your money on a world trip — through payment partners, networks, and conversion desks that all speak their own version of finance. Each route works.
Stripe runs one of the smoothest take-offs in the payment world.A U.S. client swipes, the invoice clears, dollars lift off.But once that payout leaves Stripe’s runway, it joins the long queue of international transfers — connecting through partner banks, currency desks, and compliance terminals before it can land in India. It’s a world trip your
Somewhere between a customer’s “Order Confirmed” and your bank’s “Credit Received”,your money goes sightseeing.It leaves an Etsy server in Dublin, stops at a payment processor in New York, gets converted in Singapore, and lands in India slightly jet-lagged. Shopify does something similar — different terminals, same turbulence. Because every marketplace payout is a trip: short
Money travels quietly.But every time it crosses a border, someone along the way charges it for passing through. Sometimes it’s a correspondent bank taking a handling fee.Sometimes it’s a provider adjusting an FX rate by half a percent.Either way, your invoice amount and your landed amount never quite match. The world calls it transaction cost.
Scaling an agency doesn’t teach you how to make more money.It teaches you how much of it never arrives.You hit $50,000 a month and suddenly realise your biggest client isn’t a person — it’s the payment system. Stripe takes a piece. Your U.S. bank takes a piece. An intermediary somewhere in Frankfurt takes another. By
Most exporters think they’re being paid.They’re actually being converted. The moment a client’s USD hits your account, the system rushes to turn it into INR — automatically, quietly, and usually, unfavourably.It feels efficient.It’s really just impatient. Auto-conversion was built for convenience, not optimization.But when you start moving five-figure invoices, that “automatic” feature starts costing you
Cross-border payments are a mirror. They show two different stories — yours, and the system’s. You see an inflow: money earned, service delivered, client happy. The system sometimes sees an outflow: foreign money on the move, purpose unknown, and therefore suspicious enough to interrogate. Wise calls it a payout. Payoneer calls it a disbursal. Your
Imagine a library where every book must be filed under a secret code before it’s allowed on the shelf. You hand over your freshly written title — “Software Consultancy: A Global Guide” — and wait. A week later, you find it sitting under “Miscellaneous Services.” That’s how most exporters meet compliance. You finish a project,
