About the author

I spent two decades in transaction banking and payments infrastructure: clearing operations at a major European bank, FX product management at a multinational broker, and the last several years advising fintechs on cross-border payment architecture. I have seen the pricing side of this industry from the inside. I know what exchange rate markup actually costs a provider to deliver, and how far it diverges from what they quote to customers.

Paid Across started as a personal spreadsheet. I was watching colleagues and friends — developers, designers, consultants — quietly lose 3–8% of every international invoice to fees and FX spread. Not because the providers were dishonest, but because the cost structure was opaque. Most people do not know the difference between a percentage fee and an FX markup, and they certainly do not know that the two compound. A provider advertising “no fee” can cost you twice as much as one with a visible 1% fee if the hidden FX spread is 3%.

I built this as a public tool because the math is simple once you see it laid out. The aim is to give freelancers, remote workers, and small business owners the same information that a sophisticated treasury team would look for when evaluating a payment provider.

Areas of expertise

• SWIFT and SEPA network mechanics, correspondent banking, and nostro/vostro accounts
• FX pricing and bid-ask spread construction in interbank and retail contexts
• EMI (Electronic Money Institution) regulation in the EU and UK
• Freelancer payment workflows: Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal, direct invoicing
• Receiving corridors for restricted markets: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt

Methodology and standards

Every fee figure on this site is sourced from the provider's own public pricing page, with the verification date recorded. If a fee cannot be confirmed from a public source, it is labeled as an estimate or marked TODO. For a site covering people's actual income, a wrong number is worse than a missing one.

The exchange rates used in calculations are live mid-market rates from open.er-api.com, refreshed hourly on each page. There are no hardcoded rates. Provider ranking is determined entirely by net received amount after all fees and FX markup.

The underlying fee data is open-source on GitHub. Anyone can check the numbers or submit a correction with a source link.

Why pseudonymous

I have worked with and for several of the payment providers reviewed on this site. Using a pseudonym avoids any suggestion that reviews are shaped by former employer relationships. The fee data and methodology are public and auditable; the conclusions stand or fall on the math, not on who wrote them.