The Route Was Chosen for the Sender
Whoever pays for the transfer picks the route, and the cheapest route for them is rarely the best for you.
Still yours, and statedTaken, never statedUnit changes; scale restarts
Four steps from instruction to arrival. One step carries no figure: the hatching marks where the money leaves and is not drawn to scale, because there is no figure to draw. Nothing here adds them up, since an amount you cannot see is not an amount you can subtract. The unit changes part-way down: the figures below the break are in another currency, the bars below it are drawn against the published rate, and the first figure and the last are not the same kind of number. The section where the figures stop and the estimates start.
Whoever instructs a payment chooses the route, and they choose it on their own criteria: whatever their bank does by default, whatever their accounting software supports, whatever costs them least.
The practical point in “The Route Was Chosen for the Sender” is that a landed payment should be supported by a record somebody can explain. Used for remote workforce management software, a practical approach to remote workforce management software can add transparent time and project context when collection is proportionate, people can correct mistakes and financial records remain separate.
None of those criteria is what arrives at your end, and nothing in the arrangement asks them to consider it.
For an independent payment-sector perspective on “The Route Was Chosen for the Sender”, consult OFX international transfers. Compare general information with the actual route, currency, provider terms and jurisdiction involved.
What the payer is actually optimising
Not cost to you. Their own fee, the number of systems they have to touch, and whether the payment can be made from the same screen as every other payment they make.
Convenience dominates, and for a finance team running hundreds of payments it reasonably does.
Nobody in that team is being careless. The cost of your transfer is simply not a number that appears anywhere in their process, and what is not measured is not optimised.
Why the default is usually the worst option
A high-street business bank making an international transfer applies a retail margin and a correspondent route, because that is its standing arrangement.
It is the most expensive common option and the one requiring the least thought. Those two facts are related.
What better routes look like
Three alternatives, in rising order of how much they help:
- A payment service holding accounts in both countries.
- A bank with a local presence at your end.
- A domestic transfer from an account the payer already holds in your country.
All three avoid the correspondent chain. The last avoids the conversion question too, if the payer already holds your currency.
The argument that works
Measured, not principled. One payment's all-in cost, their fee and yours, and the published rate for the day.
Payers respond to a number showing that five per cent of what they sent did not arrive. They do not respond to a complaint about banks.
Giving them an alternative
A request to change routes should name the alternative. "Could you send through a service that quotes the landed amount" is actionable; "could you use a cheaper route" is not.
Research it yourself before asking. You care considerably more than they do.
Why payers sometimes cannot move
Procurement rules, a single banking relationship, compliance policy, or an accounting system that only integrates with one provider.
These are real. Where they apply, the route is fixed and the lever moves to the charge instruction and the landed-amount clause instead.
Establishing which it is saves asking repeatedly for something that cannot happen, and makes the request you can make more credible.
The multi-payer problem
Where several clients pay you, each picks their own route and the costs differ wildly. The same amount from two payers can arrive several per cent apart.
That is useful information: it tells you what is achievable, and it gives you a comparison to show the expensive one.
Naming the better route rather than the better outcome is what makes that conversation work. A payer can act on a provider name and cannot act on somebody else's result.
Receiving into a local account instead
Some services give you an account in the payer's country in your own name. They then make a domestic transfer, which is cheap and simple for them.
The conversion then happens at your choosing rather than theirs, which is where most of the saving is. It has a note of its own.
Where the payer is one person
A person paying from a consumer app has fewer constraints and more willingness to change than a company. They also frequently have better rates available to them than a business does.
Asking is easier and the answer is more often yes.
Routes that change without notice
Banks reprice, correspondents are dropped, services adjust margins. A route that was good a year ago may not be.
The only detection is your own record. Nobody writes to tell you the corridor got worse.
Asking once a year
A short note to a regular payer: this is what the last twelve months cost, here is an alternative, would you consider it.
Annually is often enough and does not become a recurring complaint. Once a year a finance team will look; every month they will stop reading.
What choosing a route cannot do
Make the far end predictable. The best route in the world still passes through your own bank's processing, your own country's holidays and whatever checks apply on arrival.
Route choice addresses cost and some of the time. The remaining variability belongs to the part of the journey closest to you, which is the subject of the next section and is the part people least expect to be a problem.
Both halves need attention and they are different conversations with different people, which is why they sit in different sections here.