How are you folks getting paid? What are your issues with managing your finances?
Saw a tweet recently that using payment processors was expensive, yes the 2.9%+30cents for someone who mainly deals with ACH/ cheques. I wanted to understand how digital nomads handled their payments
We use a payment processor. Only with very high value consulting clients do we do wires/ACH. We build the 3% into our pricing model.
It's worth it since we have been able to reduce our average invoice-to-payment period from almost 3 weeks to just under 3 days.
thank you. Very helpful reply.
Normally I use regular payment processing with cards. I'm a European resident, and so I get a 1.4% + 30p rate for EU cards via Stripe (about 60% of my customers are Europe), so that works out. For the rest it's the regular 2.9% + 30p. If you have a lot of EU customers, you can register a UK Ltd company fairly easily and cheap (~£60/yr incl. address), then you're eligible for the cheaper EU rates using gateways like Stripe (since you can make a European account).
Use TransferWise if you wish to receive ACH. It's either free or 0.2% to receive ACH (not entirely sure), a 65p fee to send, and you get a good exchange rate. Much cheaper than that rate.
If you do end up wanting to sign up for TransferWise I have an invite link if you don't mind using it!