You're about to close a deal with a supplier in Mexico. They want payment in pesos. Your AP team asks: "Can we even do that?"
This moment hits finance teams more often than you'd expect. And the answer determines whether you move forward with confidence or scramble to piece together a workaround that creates more problems than it solves.
For US-based finance teams, "international payments" typically means one specific thing: paying international suppliers from your USD accounts. You might be sending USD via wire transfer, or converting to the supplier's local currency. Either way, you need a solution that doesn't turn every international payment into a special project.
This guide is for: US-based companies with USD bank accounts who need to pay international suppliers. If you're managing payments from overseas subsidiaries or non-USD accounts, you're dealing with a different scenario entirely.
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Why This Capability Suddenly Matters
The "we only process a handful of international payments each month" mindset misses the point. Volume isn't the issue—friction is.
When those few international payments require logging into a separate banking portal, manually entering SWIFT codes, reconciling payments across disconnected systems, and explaining to suppliers why their payment is delayed again, those "handful" of transactions consume disproportionate time and create real business risk.
The bigger problem? Missing this capability can cost you deals before they start. A recent example: a company needed to pay Israeli suppliers in USD. Just a few payments monthly, but without that capability in place, the entire deal was in jeopardy. The payments weren't the business—but they were a dealbreaker.
This pattern shows up most often with:
- Manufacturing companies sourcing materials or components internationally
- Organizations with multiple entities across different countries
- Any business where suppliers strongly prefer payment in their local currency
- Growing companies expanding their vendor base beyond US borders
What Actually Makes International Payments Different
Your AP team knows how to process ACH payments and cut checks. International payments operate on fundamentally different infrastructure, and that difference shows up in three places: compliance requirements, data needs, and processing mechanics.
The Compliance Layer Nobody Warns You About
International payment providers operate under strict Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations. This isn't unique to any single provider—it's standard across the entire industry.
What this means for you: a more rigorous Know Your Customer (KYC) process during onboarding. You'll provide more documentation than you would for domestic payment setup, and you should expect follow-up questions from the compliance team. This isn't them being difficult—they're required to verify information before enabling cross-border payment capabilities.
Plan for this to take longer than standard onboarding. You're not being singled out; you're going through the same process every company faces when enabling international payment capabilities.
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The Data Requirements Your Current System Doesn't Handle
Your vendor database probably stores company name, address, routing number, and account number. For international payments, you need additional fields: SWIFT codes, IBAN numbers, intermediary bank information, and specific beneficiary details that vary by country.
Most AP systems aren't built to capture or store this information. That's why many companies end up maintaining international supplier details in spreadsheets alongside their main vendor database—not ideal, but often necessary in the early stages.
Currency Conversion Considerations
When you're converting USD to foreign currencies, you're adding another variable: foreign exchange rates. These rates fluctuate, they include spreads, and timing matters. Your supplier might quote you in their local currency, but you need to understand what you're actually paying in USD terms and how that impacts your cash flow forecasting.
Understanding how FX spreads work helps you evaluate the true cost of international payments. Every currency conversion includes a spread between the market rate and the rate you receive—this is standard across all foreign exchange transactions.
This is why cross-border payments must be processed as wire transfers rather than ACH. The infrastructure requirements and settlement mechanics simply don't support ACH for international transactions.
The Onboarding Reality: What to Expect
Let's be direct about what this process involves. Transparency here prevents frustration later.
Documentation You'll Need to Provide
Company verification:
- Articles of incorporation or business formation documents
- Tax identification documentation
- Proof of business address
- Information about beneficial owners and company officers
Banking information:
- Bank account verification documents
- Authorization to initiate international payments from your accounts
- Details about your funding sources for these transactions
Initial supplier list:
- Names and addresses of international vendors you plan to pay
- Payment details including SWIFT codes, account numbers, and bank information
- Currency preferences for each supplier
This feels like a lot because it is. The good news? You only go through this process once. After initial approval, adding new suppliers becomes a much simpler process.
Timeline Expectations
From start to finish, budget 3-6 weeks. Here's how that typically breaks down:
- Weeks 1-2: Compile and submit your initial application and documentation
- Weeks 2-4: Compliance review (timing varies based on your company's complexity and how quickly you can respond to follow-up questions)
- Weeks 4-6: Account setup, supplier data upload, and final configuration
The compliance review stage is the variable. Some companies sail through in a week; others take longer if there are questions about ownership structure, business model, or specific suppliers. Having complete, accurate documentation upfront speeds this considerably.
The Supplier Data Challenge
Remember those additional fields international payments require? You need to gather this information from your suppliers. Some suppliers have this information readily available; others will need to check with their banks.
Start collecting this information early in the onboarding process. A simple spreadsheet template works—you need supplier name, address, bank name and address, SWIFT/BIC code, account number (or IBAN for European suppliers), and any intermediary bank details.
Don't assume suppliers know their SWIFT codes off the top of their head. Give them time to gather accurate information from their banking institutions.
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After Setup: What Your Team Actually Does Daily
Once onboarding is complete, your AP team's workflow should feel familiar. That's the entire point.
The Payment Submission Process
Your team queues international payments in the same place they queue domestic payments—the unpaid invoices tab. They select "FX Payment" or "Cross Border USD" as the payment method, right alongside ACH and check options.
They submit for approval using your existing approval workflows. No separate logins, no switching between systems, no special handling that breaks your normal process.
Behind the scenes, the payment routes through a cross-border payment network (in many cases, solutions like Visa Cross Border Solutions), which handles the actual currency conversion and international wire transfer. The payment then posts back to your general ledger with complete remittance details, just like your domestic payments.
Your AP team doesn't need to understand the backend mechanics. From their perspective, they're processing payments the way they always have.
Processing Considerations
A few practical details that matter:
Wire transfers only. International payments process as wires, not ACH. This affects timing and cost. Your domestic ACH payments might cost $0.50 per transaction; international wires follow different pricing structures that reflect the actual costs of cross-border settlement and currency conversion.
Cutoff times and processing speeds. International payments don't settle instantly like domestic ACH. According to international banking standards, plan for 1-3 business days depending on destination country and currency. This matters for payment timing and supplier expectations.
Currency rate transparency. When converting USD to foreign currencies, you'll see the exchange rate applied at the time of processing. This rate includes a spread—standard for all foreign exchange transactions. Understanding this helps you forecast costs accurately.
Adding New Suppliers Ongoing
After your initial setup, adding new international suppliers shouldn't require weeks of processing. You'll provide the supplier details (using that same data template), and they get added to your payment-enabled supplier list.
The heavy compliance work happens once during initial onboarding. Ongoing supplier additions focus on verifying the specific supplier's information and ensuring they're not on any restricted lists—a much faster process.
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Why Integration Approach Matters
You have choices in how you enable international payment capabilities. Those choices create very different operational realities for your team.
The Separate Portal Problem
Some solutions require you to:
- Set up a separate bank account specifically for international payments
- Log into a different portal when you need to process cross-border transactions
- Manually reconcile those payments back to your ERP or accounting system
- Train your team on yet another platform with its own workflows and requirements
This creates a second AP process running parallel to your main operations. Your team now has to remember which vendors get paid through which system, maintain vendor data in multiple places, and reconcile across disconnected platforms.
The operational overhead gets worse as your international payment volume grows. What works at 5 payments per month becomes unsustainable at 20.
The Integrated Approach
Integration means your team uses one system for all payments—domestic and international. Same approval workflows, same user interface, same reconciliation process.
This can happen in two ways:
Service provider model (Phase 1): The payment submission process integrates with your existing AP workflow, but the backend processing happens operationally through a partner network. From your team's perspective, nothing feels different—they queue and approve payments normally. Behind the scenes, specialists handle the international payment processing, currency conversion, and compliance requirements, then post everything back to your GL.
This approach gets you the capability quickly without waiting for full API integration. Your team benefits from seamless workflow while experienced operations teams handle the complexity of cross-border payments.
Full API integration (Phase 2): Eventually, the entire process becomes fully automated through direct API connections. This eliminates the operational support model entirely—the system handles everything from submission through settlement automatically.
The transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 won't change anything about your team's workflow. They won't need to relearn processes or adapt to new systems. The backend becomes more efficient, but the frontend experience stays consistent.
Preparing Your Organization
Before you start the onboarding process, get clear on a few things internally.
Audit Your International Payment Needs
Take inventory of your current state:
- How many international payments do you process monthly today?
- What currencies do you need to support?
- How are you handling these payments currently (bank portal wires, third-party services, checks)?
- What's the actual time cost of your current workaround?
- Do you have deals in your pipeline that require international payment capabilities?
Also consider your growth trajectory. Even if international payments represent a small portion of your current volume, what does that look like in 12-18 months? Are you expanding into new markets, adding international suppliers, or pursuing deals with companies that operate globally?
Get Your Data House in Order
Review your current vendor records and identify gaps in international supplier information. You probably have basic contact details but are missing SWIFT codes, IBANs, and complete banking information.
Create a process for gathering this information from suppliers. A simple template works—nothing fancy required. The key is starting this process early so you're not scrambling to collect data during onboarding.
Set Internal Expectations
Have honest conversations with your AP team about the onboarding timeline. They need to know this takes weeks, not days, and that compliance reviews involve back-and-forth communication.
Also discuss what changes about their day-to-day process (almost nothing) and what stays the same (nearly everything). The goal is to eliminate surprise and anxiety about a "new system" by showing them this integrates with their existing workflow.
Evaluate the Business Case
Compare what you're doing now against what integrated international payments would provide:
Current state: Manual bank portal wires, separate reconciliation, no integration with your AP workflow, limited visibility into payment status, supplier frustration with payment delays.
Future state: International payments processed alongside domestic payments, automatic GL posting, complete audit trail, supplier payments arriving reliably and on time.
Factor in both direct costs (wire fees, FX spreads) and indirect costs (staff time, error rates, delayed payments, lost deals). The indirect costs often dwarf the direct ones.
Three Questions to Answer Before Moving Forward
1. Do we have (or anticipate) international payment requirements that justify the onboarding investment?
If you're processing even a handful of international payments monthly and expect that to continue or grow, the answer is probably yes. The investment is time and documentation, not massive capital expenditure.
2. Are we currently using workarounds that create operational friction or risk?
Manual processes, spreadsheet tracking, separate portals—these aren't just inconvenient, they create error risk and consume valuable time from your finance team. If you're living with workarounds, you already know they're not sustainable.
3. Is our current approach scalable as international business grows?
What works at 5 payments per month breaks at 25. If your international supplier base is expanding, you need infrastructure that scales without adding proportional overhead.
What This Looks Like in Practice
A manufacturing company was processing international wire transfers through their bank's portal—logging in separately, manually entering supplier details for each payment, then reconciling those payments back to their accounting system by hand.
They processed about 15 international payments monthly to suppliers in Mexico, China, and Eastern Europe. Not high volume, but each payment required 20-30 minutes of staff time, plus additional time for reconciliation and dealing with payment errors when wire details were entered incorrectly.
After enabling integrated cross-border payments, their AP team queues those same 15 payments alongside their domestic ACH and check payments. The process looks identical from their perspective—select the invoice, choose "FX Payment" as the method, approve through their normal workflow. Payments post automatically to their GL with complete remittance details.
The time savings matter, but the bigger win is reliability. Suppliers receive payments consistently and on time. The AP team isn't context-switching between systems. Errors drop to near zero because supplier details are stored correctly and don't require manual re-entry for each payment.
That's what "integrated" actually means—not just having the capability, but having it work the way your team already works.
Ready to explore if integrated cross-border payments fit your needs? Book a demo with Centime today.