Getting paid from abroad as a freelancer: Wise, PayPal, Stripe and bank transfers

Your client is in Berlin, London or San Francisco and the money has to reach the Netherlands. Every channel has its own fees, its own exchange rate and its own way of landing in your books. What a plain bank transfer, Wise, PayPal and Stripe cost, what your client needs on the invoice, and how to book it all without distorting your revenue.

Start with your invoice

Before you pick a channel: money only arrives once your client knows where to send it. What goes on the invoice depends on where your client sits.

Inside the SEPA area, in euros. Your IBAN is enough. Since 1 February 2016 a payment provider may not require a BIC for cross-border SEPA payments. Put it on anyway: it costs nothing, and there are plenty of accounts departments with a field that wants filling.

Worth knowing: businesses and institutions in the EU and the EEA are not allowed to refuse an IBAN from another EU or EEA country for a euro transfer. That is called IBAN discrimination and it is prohibited. Relevant if you use a euro IBAN from Wise or Revolut, because that is not a Dutch account and not every client system swallows it without complaint.

Outside the SEPA area. Then it goes over SWIFT and your client needs more: your IBAN and your BIC/SWIFT code, your name and address exactly as your bank holds them, and sometimes your bank's address. An American client's bank often asks for an intermediary bank as well; ask your own bank for those details and add them.

Beyond that the usual invoice requirements apply, plus the rule that the VAT amount has to be shown in euros if you invoice in another currency. See invoicing in a foreign currency and, for language and date notation, making an invoice in English.

The plain bank transfer

Inside the EU this is almost always the best channel. A SEPA transfer in euros is free or near free at most Dutch banks, arrives the next business day, and involves no exchange rate at all. No payment service beats that.

From outside the EU it gets messier. A SWIFT payment travels through one or more intermediary banks, and they want paying. When sending, your client can choose who bears the cost (in banking systems usually labelled OUR, SHA or BEN). Pick the shared option and the intermediaries take their cut out of the amount in transit, so less arrives than you invoiced. Agree this up front, or state on your invoice that bank charges are for the client.

Then there is your own bank: many Dutch banks charge for an incoming payment from outside the EEA, and add a margin to the rate on amounts in dollars or pounds. What yours charges is in its fee schedule.

Wise

Wise has become the default for non-euro income for a lot of freelancers, because the rate is the mid-market rate: the same rate you see on Google, with no margin built in. Wise charges a visible fee instead.

What the Wise pricing page says (September 2026 version):

• Converting and sending: a variable fee from 0.2%, depending on the currency.
• Receiving money: domestic receipts in EUR, USD, GBP, CAD, AUD, SGD, NZD and a few others are free. Receipts over SWIFT cost 2.39 EUR, 6.11 USD or 2.16 GBP per payment.
• Holding a balance in multiple currencies is free.
• Wise Business: signing up is free for businesses in the Netherlands; opening international account details to receive payments carries a one-off fee of 60 EUR.

One thing to know before you turn it into a savings pot: Wise is not a bank. Wise does not lend your money out but keeps it separate (safeguarding), and precisely because of that it is not covered by a deposit guarantee scheme the way a bank account is. Fine as a conduit for your revenue, not a place to park your tax reserve.

PayPal

PayPal is quick to arrange and many foreign clients already have it. You pay for that.

What the PayPal Netherlands fee page says (September 2026 version) for commercial transactions on a business account:

• Domestic receipts: 3.40% + € 0.35 per transaction.
• International receipts: no surcharge within the EEA, 1.29% from the United Kingdom, 1.99% from other markets, on top of the domestic rate.
• Currency conversion: 3.00% above the base exchange rate.

You never see those fees on your bank statement, because they are gone before the money reaches you. So always book gross: your revenue is the invoice amount and the deduction is a separate cost. How to handle a PayPal balance, withdrawals, refunds and the export is in PayPal in your bookkeeping.

Stripe

Stripe is not a payment button but payment infrastructure: you connect it to a shop, a subscription service or your own checkout page. For one-off invoices it is overkill; for recurring payments from international clients it is strong.

What the Stripe Netherlands pricing page says (September 2026 version) for standard pricing:

Standard payouts to your bank account are free; instant payouts and multi-currency payouts cost 1%.

Which channel when?

Rule of thumb: the larger the amount, the more a percentage matters. On € 5,000, a 3.40% fee plus a 3% conversion margin easily costs three hundred euros more than a transfer.

How to book it

Three rules get almost everything right.

1. Book gross, not net. Your revenue is the amount on your invoice. Whatever the payment service withholds is a separate cost. Invoice € 500 and receive € 482.65, and you book € 500 of revenue and € 17.35 of costs, not € 482.65 of revenue. Otherwise your VAT return is wrong: the VAT belongs to the invoice amount.

2. There is no VAT on payment service fees. Payment services are a VAT-exempt financial service. So there is no VAT on the statement from PayPal, Stripe, Wise or your bank, and there is no input VAT to reclaim. Do not book them as a 21% expense, or you claim VAT that never existed.

3. The difference caused by the rate is an exchange result. You book your revenue at the rate of the invoice date. What arrives later in euros is almost never that exact amount. The difference is an exchange gain or loss: it counts towards your profit, but it is not revenue and it changes nothing in your VAT return. See invoicing in a foreign currency.

And do not forget the balance: a PayPal or Wise balance is your business's money and therefore belongs in your records, just like your bank account. Moving your Wise balance to your bank is neither revenue nor cost, only a relocation.

Two traps

Do not use a private account. Not your private bank account, and not a personal PayPal or Wise account either. Three reasons. Your records become untraceable the moment groceries and client payments run through the same statement, and your retention obligation runs seven years. Payment platforms themselves distinguish personal from business accounts, with their own fees and terms per type; business receipts on a personal account can get it limited, so read your provider's terms. And on the DAFT route or another self-employment permit you have to be able to show what sits in your business, which only works with a separate account. See the business bank account.

Do not leave currencies in one pile. It is tempting to let dollars, pounds and euros sit for months and convert when the rate suits you. That is allowed, but every conversion has to stay traceable: which amount, which day, which rate. Your administration is in euros, so each conversion is a moment you record. Convert half a year of income in one go and there is no way back to which invoice belonged to which rate, which is exactly what the retention obligation asks of you.

How Finq handles it

• Currency per invoice. Euro, dollar, pound or Swiss franc. Finq suggests the ECB reference rate for your invoice date, prints the VAT amount and total in euros below the invoice, and keeps your administration in euros.
• A separate PayPal tab on Bank. You import the PayPal activity report; transaction fees are booked as costs automatically (without VAT), withdrawals to your bank are ignored, and invoices are matched on invoice number.
• Bank import. You import CSV, MT940 or CAMT.053. To be honest: the Wise and Revolut exports have not been tested against real files. A Revolut IBAN is recognised and their CSV runs through the generic reader, but it is not proven. If your import fails, let us know and we will look at the file.
• Exchange results in Reports. Once a foreign-currency invoice is fully paid, the difference shows up as an exchange result, separate from your revenue.
• The payment link is euro only. The online payment link through Mollie does not work in dollars; those invoices go out as a PDF or through an invoice link. The same will apply to e-invoices via Peppol.

See how the accounting software works.

This is general information, not personal tax advice. The fees come from the official pricing pages of Wise, PayPal Netherlands and Stripe Netherlands, consulted on 6 September 2026; providers change them regularly, so check before you rely on them. The rule that a BIC may not be required within SEPA, and the ban on IBAN discrimination, are set out by De Nederlandsche Bank (dnb.nl). The VAT exemption for payment services is in article 135 of the EU VAT Directive and article 11 of the Dutch VAT Act; check your own situation on belastingdienst.nl or with your bookkeeper.