A multi-currency account is sold as a way to save money on exchange. That is half true, and the half that is missing is where most companies actually lose: not on the rate itself, but on how many times a single amount is converted before it reaches the person you owe.
So the useful question is not «should we have one» but «how many conversions does our money currently go through, and how many of them are avoidable». Answer that and the account either pays for itself immediately or turns out to be unnecessary.
Contents
- Where the money actually leaks
- What is published, and what is not
- When it genuinely saves
- When it does not
- SEPA, SWIFT and why the route matters more than the currency
- How to work out your own number
- What to set up before you need it
- In short
Where the money actually leaks
- Double conversion. A customer pays in dollars, it lands as euro, and you pay a supplier back in dollars. Two conversions on the same money, and only one of them was ever needed.
- The markup, not the rate. The published mid-market rate is not what you get; the difference is the markup, and it is charged on the whole amount every time.
- Transfer fees that scale. A fixed fee is noise on a large invoice and painful on a small one. A percentage is the opposite. Most businesses have both and have measured neither.
- Timing. Holding a currency until you need it is free; converting it early because there was nowhere to keep it is not.
How exchange costs stack up on cross-border money is unpacked in our piece on high currency exchange fees.
What is published, and what is not
For a company account the published lines are: internal payments 10,00 EUR, SEPA in and out 10 EUR + 0,30%, incoming SWIFT in euro 50 EUR + 0,35%, FasterPayments and CHAPS 15 GBP, opening 1 000,00 EUR, closing 100,00 EUR.
The conversion markup for a company is not published on the pricing page — it is agreed per business, and we consider individual solutions for your business. Anyone quoting you a company FX figure from a public page is quoting the personal column, and those are different products. The published private-account lines are opening 10,00 EUR, maintenance 3,00 EUR a month, SEPA 1,00 EUR + 0,35% and an FX markup of 1,00%; on a card the FX markup is 2,99%.
All of it sits on the pricing page, in two columns that are not interchangeable.
When it genuinely saves
- You earn and spend in the same non-home currency. The clearest case: hold it, spend it, convert nothing.
- Suppliers invoice you in their own currency. Paying from a balance in that currency removes a conversion and a transfer route.
- Your customers are in several countries. Local details lift conversion at checkout as much as they save on fees.
- Volume is steady enough to time conversions. If you can choose when to convert, holding is worth something. If every euro is spent on arrival, it is not.
When it does not
One currency in, one currency out, everything domestic — a multi-currency account adds an account to reconcile and saves nothing. The same is true when volumes are small: a markup you rarely pay is cheaper than the complexity of managing balances you barely use.
And it is not the answer to a different problem. If the pain is that customers pay by card and settlement is slow, the fix is on the acceptance side, described under payment processing, not in the number of currencies you hold.
SEPA, SWIFT and why the route matters more than the currency
Euro moving inside SEPA is cheap and fast; the same amount over SWIFT carries a fixed fee plus a percentage and passes through correspondent banks that may deduct along the way. That difference is unpacked in our piece on SEPA and SWIFT transfers.
The practical consequence: give customers and suppliers details on the route that is cheapest for the currency, rather than one set of details for everything. Where those details live is described under business IBAN.
How to work out your own number
Take one ordinary month. Count every conversion, not every transfer. Multiply each converted amount by the markup you actually paid — the gap between your rate and the mid-market rate on that day, not the fee line on the statement. Add the transfer fees. That total is what a multi-currency setup is competing against, and it is usually larger than the rate discussion people have instead.
What to set up before you need it
Three preparations cost nothing while volumes are small and are awkward to retrofit once they are not. Decide which currencies you actually hold rather than collecting them because they are available. Give each currency its own settlement routine, so nobody converts by habit at the end of the month. And keep one report that shows converted amounts separately from transferred amounts — most accounting systems merge the two, which is precisely why the cost stays invisible.
In short
A multi-currency account saves by removing conversions, not by improving the rate. Count the conversions in one month, check which are structural and which are accidental, and compare that number with the cost of holding balances. And keep the columns straight: the company tariff and the private tariff are separate products, and the FX line for a company is agreed rather than published. If cards are part of the picture, the merchant account is a separate product again, reviewed alongside.