Storspay vs a bank wire: what actually happens to US$10,000 sent to Africa, Latin America or Asia
A wire is not one fee — it is four, plus a spread nobody prints. Here is the line-by-line comparison against a Storspay payout, and why "same business day" is the part that changes how you run payroll.
Ask a bank what an international wire costs and you will hear one number — $25, $35, $45. That number is the smallest part of what you pay. Here is where the rest goes, and what the same payment looks like on Storspay.
The four charges inside a wire
- Outgoing wire fee. The one you are told about: $25–$50 per wire, per recipient. Twenty contractors means twenty fees.
- Intermediary-bank fees. A wire to Lagos, Bogotá or Colombo rarely travels direct. One or two correspondent banks each take $10–$30 from the amount in flight — after it has left your account, before it arrives.
- Receiving-bank fee. The recipient's bank takes its own cut, typically $10–$25, or a percentage.
- The FX spread. The biggest and least visible. The bank converts at a rate 2–4% worse than the mid-market rate and prints nothing about it. On $10,000 that is $200–$400.
Add them up and a typical wire into the corridors Storspay serves costs 5–7% of the amount. On US$10,000, the recipient sees roughly $9,300–$9,500 worth of local currency, three to five business days later, and you find out it arrived when they tell you.
The same payment on Storspay
One fee: 2% all-in, shown before you confirm. Conversion at the mid-market rate. No intermediary, no receiving fee. The recipient gets the local-currency equivalent of $9,800 the same business day, to the bank account or mobile-money wallet they already use, and you see "completed" only once their bank or network has confirmed it.
| Bank wire | Storspay | |
|---|---|---|
| Fees you see | $25–$50 per wire | 2% all-in, one line |
| Fees you don't | Intermediary + receiving + spread | None |
| Rate | Bank rate, unpublished | Mid-market, shown before you confirm |
| Speed | 3–5 business days | Same business day; minutes on mobile money and real-time rails |
| Recipient sees | Something less than expected | Exactly the amount on your screen |
| 20 recipients | 20 wires, 20 fees, 20 tracking numbers | One batch, one total, one debit |
Why speed changes the way you run payroll
When a payment takes a week, you send it a week early, which means you fund it a week early, which means your money is in transit for a quarter of every month. Same-day settlement lets you run payroll on payday. That is not a convenience; it is working capital.
When a wire still makes sense
For a one-off payment to a country Storspay does not serve yet, or an amount far above a corridor's channel caps where the recipient specifically needs a single credit, a wire is still the tool. For everything recurring into the 26 corridors — salaries, contractor invoices, supplier settlements, stipends — it is not.
Run your own corridor on the calculator: it shows the wire figure and the Storspay figure side by side for the amount you actually send.
Who this is for — and who it is not for
Storspay is for businesses, and a sole trader counts as one. If you are a freelancer or sole proprietor trading in your own name, you open a business account of the sole-trader type. You can be paid by companies abroad, and you can pay other businesses on Storspay — including other sole traders — for work they have done for you.
What Storspay is not is a personal money-transfer service. We do not open personal accounts, and every payment has to be a business transaction: an invoice, a contract, work delivered. Money to family, gifts and personal transfers are not what this is, and we would rather say so now than at verification.
See your own corridor number. What your team receives, what Storspay costs, what you keep — no sign-up.
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