The problem
You’ve placed the candidate. The client is happy. The invoice is raised. And then comes the question that catches most agencies off guard when they start placing internationally, how do you actually get paid in their currency without it eating into the placement fee you just worked hard to earn?
This is increasingly relevant for TRN members. More agencies in the network are placing talent in international markets than ever before. Those markets offer real opportunity, but they also come with a payments reality that most UK banks are not equipped to handle well.
Why it matters
When it comes to receiving foreign currency, most agencies face one of two situations with their bank. Either the bank won’t open a foreign currency account at all; which is more common than people expect or they will open one, but the process is slow, the rates are poor, only certain currencies and every conversion happens on the bank’s terms, not yours.
Both routes carry a cost that is easy to overlook. Banks typically apply a spread of 2.5% to 4% on every currency conversion. On a business billing £300,0
00 annually in US dollars, that is potentially £7,500 to £12,000 per year going quietly to the bank. Not as a fee you can see and challenge. Just as the difference between the rate the bank buys at and the rate they give you.
Add to that the timing problem. Currency markets move daily. A USD payment converted automatically on arrival one week might return significantly less in sterling than the same payment converted a week later. Without control over when you convert, you have no way to manage that outcome. For agencies focused on protecting margins, which came through clearly as a top concern in the TRN Q1 network review, this is a meaningful and solvable problem.
What traditional solutions exist
There are two broad approaches agencies typically take, and both have limitations worth understanding.
The first is staying with the bank and accepting automatic conversion. Simple, but costly and entirely outside your control. For agencies doing occasional international placements this may feel manageable. But as US and LatAm billings grow, the cumulative cost grows with them.
The second is opening a foreign currency account with the bank where they allow it. This gives you somewhere to hold the currency before converting, which is an improvement. The problem is that bank FX rates remain expensive, the account infrastructure is often rigid, you may get rejected and the service rarely comes with the kind of specialist support that helps you make better decisions about when and how to convert.
Neither approach gives you full control. And neither is built for agencies whose international payment flows are growing in complexity; multiple currencies, regular contractor payments, high-value placements where margin certainty matters.
How a payments specialist works and what it means for your agency
A specialist international payments provider operates differently to a bank. Rather than sitting on one banking relationship with a standard rate, a provider like this works across a network of institutional banking partners; which means tighter rates, more currency options, and account infrastructure that is built specifically for businesses moving money across borders regularly.
In practical terms, here is what that looks like for a recruitment agency. You open an account and get access to a multi-currency e-wallet with named accounts in the currencies you need; USD, EUR, CAD and others, all managed from a single dashboard. When a US client pays your invoice in dollars, the payment arrives into your named USD account and sits there. You hold it. You can pay a contractor or supplier directly in USD from that balance. And when you decide to convert to GBP or other currencies, you do so at a rate you choose and at a time that works for you and not when the payment happens to arrive. The FX costs are significantly lower than a standard bank convers
ion, which on regular billing volumes adds up to a material difference in what you actually take home from each placement.
For LatAm, the picture is similar; the ability to hold and manage currencies like MXN, rather than converting everything immediately through a bank at poor rates, gives agencies placing in those markets a genuine operational and commercial advantage.
Next steps
The TRN Q1 review highlighted that members want fewer supplier relationships, not more and only ones that solve a genuine problem. If international payments are creating friction, cost or uncertainty in your business right now, the conversation is worth having.
Sam or Ant will look at your current setup, be straight with you about whether there is a better way, and walk you through exactly what the process looks like.
