Poll: Do you find it difficult to provide a payment method to new clients which also works well for you? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Do you find it difficult to provide a payment method to new clients which also works well for you?".
View the poll results »
| | | | | Never (Difficult?) | Jul 2, 2022 |
Most of my potential new clients are in the Eurozone and my preferred payment method is bank transfers. It's fast, easy, secure and free (within the EU). For non-EU potential clients, I always suggest payment through Wise or TransferMate.
| | | | | Bank transfer | Jul 2, 2022 |
I can accept payments from the EU without problems, or from clients in the UK.
From Norway, there are bank charges, but I have one major client, who pays on the dot when the invoice arrives, so I invoice quarterly, and then the bank charges are small in proportion to the total.
I have used PayPal for occasional clients from the USA or other ´third countries´, but there are not many.
| | | | Tina Vonhof (X)
Canada
Local time: 17:27
Dutch to English
+ ...
I have three options, depending on where the client is: e-transfer (from bank to bank and done immediately) if the client is in Canada, Paypal for most everywhere else, and an occasional client wants to pay by bank transfer, which is my least preferred option because it takes long to arrive.
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The answer options for this poll, as so often recently, look like the output of a badly programmed artificial intelligence.
I had one client in the US who claimed they couldn't pay me by PayPal because they had switched to a system called ACH. It took me some time to extract from them the information that this stands for Automated Clearing House and is supposedly a way to "send or receive money conveniently and securely ... between accounts at different banks." The way they talked a... See more The answer options for this poll, as so often recently, look like the output of a badly programmed artificial intelligence.
I had one client in the US who claimed they couldn't pay me by PayPal because they had switched to a system called ACH. It took me some time to extract from them the information that this stands for Automated Clearing House and is supposedly a way to "send or receive money conveniently and securely ... between accounts at different banks." The way they talked about it made it sound like a new and startling innovation, rather than something that Europe has been doing for years (SEPA payments).
The error message they were getting - and again, finding this out was a long and painful process - was "your supported funding method is not available". Apparently, this was my fault. They offered to send me a cheque (!) instead. I declined. I suggested Transferwise (as it was then), but the client's accounts department seemed unable to understand how it worked.
The amount of money involved was small, so eventually, after about 20 emails over a period of a month, I had them donate my fee to the US Red Cross, then remove me from their books.
This was one of those cases where a good client is taken over by another company and then turns bad. Anyway, it was two years ago. ▲ Collapse
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Adding to what I said earlier, payment method is part of the initial negotiation and is as “difficult” as agreeing on rates, deadline and payment terms…
| | | | Michael Newton 
United States
Local time: 19:27
Japanese to English
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| Payment methods | Jul 3, 2022 |
(1) Paypal, bank transfer for domestic and foreign clients
(2) paper check for US law firms.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 01:27
French to English
I only work with clients in the eurozone, (all but 2½ are in France) and they all pay by bank transfer. A handful used to pay by cheque, but they all worked out how to pay by transfer during lockdown. I wouldn't agree to being paid any other way.
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