(International) freelance payment options

indiebio

indiebio

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Hi

Do you know or use any of these payment options (for international freelance work)? It's probably suitable for general international salary transfers too.

I am considering doing freelance writing online, and need to choose a payment method. I guess post covid this may be useful to many people, as (international) travel may be restricted for some time. Things to consider is what is accepted in South Africa, what are the fees, what else? The time to process and get your money I guess is not something that can be improved, and in my experience with transferwise takes the longest the first time to jump through the bureaucratic hurdles.

Neteller

ecoPayz

Skrill

Paysera

Revolut

Any other not mentioned here?
 
If you can, you are generally better off keeping the money offshore until there is a sizable sum, then transferring it. Otherwise fixed fees per transaction eat into the amount you get out a lot.
 
Thanks smc, I see the company I registered with recommend that as well. They actually only have two payment options currently; Wire Transfer (which requires banking details beyond SWIFT that I have no idea about, like the "ABA number of your bank's CORRESPONDING BANK in the USA") and Skrill - https://www.skrill.com/en/

Anyone have experience with Skrill in SA?

I abhor Paypal but wonder if Stripe is an option, the Debian conference people are considering it as an alternative to Paypal for conference attendance fees. https://stripe.com/gb
 
indiebio said:
Wire Transfer (which requires banking details beyond SWIFT that I have no idea about, like the "ABA number of your bank's CORRESPONDING BANK in the USA")
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Your local bank can give you that information (except for Capitec, who I think still don't do forex).
 
smc said:
If you can, you are generally better off keeping the money offshore until there is a sizable sum, then transferring it. Otherwise fixed fees per transaction eat into the amount you get out a lot.
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The problem is the Reserve Bank's exchange control regulations mandate that any foreign currency earned overseas has to be repatriated back to South Africa within 30 days.
 
deweyzeph said:
The problem is the Reserve Bank's exchange control regulations mandate that any foreign currency earned overseas has to be repatriated back to South Africa within 30 days.
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Yes. However, they also allow for overseas investment within your discretionary limit.
 
smc said:
Yes. However, they also allow for overseas investment within your discretionary limit.
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This is also true. I've often wondered how they would know the difference. I think technically if you want to keep the foreign income as foreign investment you have to repatriate it back to South Africa with the correct BOP code and then transfer it back overseas with the correct investment BOP code. In practice however I think it's probably pretty difficult to enforce.
 
deweyzeph said:
This is also true. I've often wondered how they would know the difference. I think technically if you want to keep the foreign income as foreign investment you have to repatriate it back to South Africa with the correct BOP code and then transfer it back overseas with the correct investment BOP code. In practice however I think it's probably pretty difficult to enforce.
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Yes. To my knowledge no one's every really specified how the "transfer back in 30 days" vs the "investment allowance" works. In practice I think that as long as its within the 1 million, probably nobody cares.
 
smc said:
Yes. To my knowledge no one's every really specified how the "transfer back in 30 days" vs the "investment allowance" works. In practice I think that as long as its within the 1 million, probably nobody cares.
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There's a fair bit of collaboration between SARB and SARS. If they really wanted to SARB and SARS could cross-reference declared foreign income with incoming BOP income remittances and query why the two don't match, and likewise query why declared foreign assets don't match with outgoing BOP single discretionary allowance declarations. Whether this actually happens in practice though, I have no idea.
 
deweyzeph said:
There's a fair bit of collaboration between SARB and SARS. If they really wanted to SARB and SARS could cross-reference declared foreign income with incoming BOP income remittances and query why the two don't match, and likewise query why declared foreign assets don't match with outgoing BOP single discretionary allowance declarations. Whether this actually happens in practice though, I have no idea.
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Yes. If you don't declare the income to SARS, then things will really go bad quickly.
 
SWIFT (wire transfer) would be the best option as it has the lowest transaction fess.

We use SWIFT for larger transfers & PayPal for smaller projects when hiring on upwork
 
Bitcoin, it's low fees, safe and pretty well defined in terms of tax laws so definitely an option in 2020.
 
Thor said:
Bitcoin, it's low fees, safe and pretty well defined in terms of tax laws so definitely an option in 2020.
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correct from a tax perspective getting your employer to pay you in btc is another story though :)_
 
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