By Kirill Yurovskiy, Cross-Border Payments Consultant
The rapid proliferation of remote work, freelancing, and the overall gig economy has brought with it unique financial realities the traditional systems were ill-equipped to handle. No longer are workers tethered to one corporate employer or geographic location – they’re global entrepreneurs selling skills across borders.
As someone who has spent nearly two decades at the forefront of facilitating international money movement, I’ve witnessed firsthand the challenges this new workforce dynamic presents from a payments perspective. Existing solutions like domestic payroll or retail remittances services fail to adequately address the bespoke needs of freelancers, contractors, and self-employed individuals.
These remote “gig-preneurs” require tailored capabilities enabling them to compliantly receive payments from clients worldwide while optimizing conversions and minimizing fees. In this article, I’ll outline key peculiarities to address so they can perform their services and get paid both seamlessly and profitably.
Challenge 1: Receiving International Payments
For traditional employees, getting paid is relatively simple – funds automatically land in a domestic bank account via payroll processing. But when you’re a gig worker collecting income across borders, it gets complicated quickly:
Different Client Locations
Freelancers rarely have the luxury of all their clients being situated in one geographic location or using the same currency. They’re piecing together a living from revenue streams spanning the globe.
Multiple Payout Methods
Clients themselves leverage different methods of disbursing earnings – some prefer wiring funds while others use digital services or even international money orders. Freelancers need versatile payment acceptance abilities.
Tax/Compliance Variations
While corporate employees receive payroll taxed appropriately based on location, freelancers must navigate their own tax liabilities in each jurisdiction they receive income from – no easy feat for multi-national earnings.
Leading money transfer companies have invested in developing specialized solutions better accommodating the needs of international gig workers. Capabilities such as:
- Multi-Currency Accounts: Enabling funds to be held and paid out in any currency.
- Virtual Wallets: Segregating finances streams across clients/income sources.
- Rapid Account Setup: Quickly activating money receipt avenues anywhere on earth.
- Foreign Bank Data Integration: Automatically validating payers and streamlining funds flows.
These purpose-built platforms help gig workers get paid quickly and compliantly from any client no matter their location or preferred payout method. Plus, accounting integrations assist in properly tracking earnings by client/geography for simplified tax filing.
Challenge 2: Getting Paid in Local Currency
So you’ve found a way to conveniently receive funds from your roster of international clients – but if they’re all paying in various foreign currencies, you’ll need to convert those disbursements into your local spending money at some point. This is where traditional remittance solutions falter.
The Legacy Banking Issue
While banks offer currency exchange services, they’re infamous for overcharging on conversion fees and skewing exchange rates in their favor – often marking up rates 3-5% beyond true interbank rates. On larger transfer amounts, these hidden fees destroy profit margins.
Of course, gig workers could simply have clients remit funds directly in their home currency, but that places the financial burden on the client to absorb egregious currency markups instead. Not an ideal business arrangement.
The Money Transfer Solution
Just as they revolutionized the way freelancers received payments, new fintech-driven money transfer services have done the same for converting international income into usable local currency without excessive markups or fees.
Firms like TransferWise, OFX, XE and others leverage sophisticated foreign exchange infrastructures built around:
- Real Mid-Market Exchange Rates: No artificial skewing or excessive markups.
- Nominal Conversion Fees: Flat fees as low as 0.5% rather than percentage premiums.
- Seamless Platform Integration: Connecting conversion and payout in one smooth flow.
For freelance consultants or contractors generating six-figure revenues from abroad, these types of transparent, low-cost conversion capabilities via specialized transfer providers can translate into exponentially higher net earnings versus doing conversions through traditional banks.
Challenge 3: Managing Cash Flow & Taxes
While having the agility to work from anywhere globally bestows independence, it also introduces cash flow complexities. Consider the scenarios where:
Out-of-Sync Payment Cycles
Income doesn’t always neatly arrive on a standard pay schedule as with a traditional job. Freelancer earnings may spike and dip, causing cash flow crunches between client payments.
Tax/Invoicing Compliance
Many gig workers struggle staying compliant across multiple tax jurisdictions – not only furnishing accurate self-employment taxes locally but adhering to sales tax or value-added tax (VAT) regulations across client locations.
Unpaid/Late Payments
Without formalized contracts, freelancers may face clients delaying payments or failing to fulfill invoices altogether. Basic lack of recourse is a common lament.
To navigate these intricacies, the freelance community has increasingly migrated to specialist platforms tailored for remote workers. Solutions focus on key needs:
Client Management
Managing leads, billings, and collections for each client relationship rather than one-off payment facilitation.
Tax Management
Integrating with accounting tools like FreshBooks to track global filings and payments down to the invoice line-item level.
Payments Routing
Intelligently routing incoming funds across any multi-currency accounts or on to payroll. No more “self-paying.”
These purpose-built providers fill niches the traditional finance world overlooked – addressing the specific cash management and accounting nuances of working autonomously across borders.
Empowering Optionality for Gig Workers
Collectively, these shifts in capabilities provided by forward-thinking money transfer innovators have empowered a new era of workforce autonomy on a global scale. Rather than being confined to local employers and salaries, skilled individuals can take their services direct to international clients.
Of course, even as these payments platforms rise to meet emerging needs, evolution remains constant. In my consulting engagements, I’ve found adept freelancers regularly reviewing service options to ensure their payments remain:
Flexible – Can freelancers easily move funds between currencies/accounts/on-ramping methods?
Low Cost – What combination offers the best overall foreign exchange rates, remittance fees, etc.?
Compliant – Are there capabilities to properly track/remit tax obligations globally?
Accessible – Can funds be cost-effectively dispersed for on-the-ground living expenses worldwide?
The importance of optionality cannot be overstated. Because the gig economy knows no borders, gig workers need solutions equally versatile in supporting that mobility across currencies and jurisdictions.
A New Model Needs New Solutions
The rise of a global remote workforce has profound macro-economic implications – it fundamentally decouples labor supply from geographic constraints. But such paradigm shifts require parallel evolutions in supporting financial infrastructure.
While existing legacy payment highways were constructed for obsolete workforce models tethered to corporations and locations, modern freelancer solutions break free from those traditional limitations. A new generation of specialized, agile financial capabilities tailored specifically to support the gig economy is already flourishing.
For the rising wave of digital nomads choosing to live life as transnational gig workers, the financial freedom and flexibility they’ve long craved is finally being actualized globally. And by leveraging the array of new products and services outlined here designed explicitly for cross-border income movement, that freedom will only continue expanding.