Stefan Austermühle, General Manager of Gemrock Peru                       September 2021

International payments are expensive. Often there are several service providers involved and each of them charges a fee. Additionally there are many times different rules around the world for money transfers. We at Gemrock Peru are trying to help you to avoid being overcharged by banks, to reduce your bank charges and to increase your profits, because your success is ours.

Bank charges cannot be avoided, but by understanding in detail how the international money transfer system works, we can choose between different alternatives and optimize our profits.

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1.) Traditional wire transfers

A wire transfer is nothing else than sending your money from your bank account to our bank account: bank to bank.

Nowadays you don’t have to get out of the door anymore to make a line at your local bank. Internet services such as “WISE” work on your computer and mobile and are simple internet platforms that perform classic bank wires.

The bank that sends the money will charge a fee for doing so. However they will give you a choice: that is to pay the fee yourself or to charge this fee to the receiver of the payment.

As a general rule companies around the world will not accept that customers charge their bank fees to them, and neither would we.

We at Gemrock Peru are going to send you a quote for your products which will give you the amount that we expect to arrive on our bank account. We cannot, of course, carry the cost of your bank to send the money. Therefore you must tell your bank that you will carry the costs for the money transfer.

If you do otherwise this will result in an incomplete payment and we will ask you to pay the balance in a second money transfer before we can ship your goods, which will result in additional transfer fees for you.

In Summary: You will carry the charges of your bank to send the money. We will carry the charges of our bank to receive the money. 

Bad Surprise: Hidden fees for Intermediary banks

Some banks from other countries ( most often smaller local banks) do not have direct ties to Peruvian banks. Instead, they use an intermediate bank: Which means your bank will charge you for wiring the money to an intermediary bank, but not the entire way through to a Peruvian bank.

This second “intermediary” bank then wires the money to our bank in Peru. In the USA many smaller local banks work with Morgan Chase Bank as an intermediary bank.

Of course, this intermediate bank will charge a fee for its “work” and sadly such fees from intermediate banks are much higher than the local bank fees you might get charged from your home bank.

For example, a bank from a client in the USA or Europe may charge the customer a 10 to 20 dollar transfer fee, but the intermediate bank may charge an additional 60 to 90 USD.  Another problem is that the intermediary bank will not charge those fees to the sender, but to the receiver (to us).

We will not accept to carry such fees. We cannot know which of our clients use intermediary banks and which do not. Therefore we cannot not incorporate such costs in our pricing structure. If intermediary banks discount their fees on our side, we will ask you for a balance payment. 

Bank Wire Pros & Cons – and tips on how to save money with bank wires

PROS

Tip 1: By using an internet platform like WISE you save time and reduce stress, by making easy bank wires on your computer. Often you also can avoid intermediary bank charges by using “WISE”

Tip 2: Bank Wire Fees are fixed amounts being independent of the amount of money you are sending. The banks will charge the same amount no matter if you wire 100 or 100 000 USD. According to our experience bank wire fees are cheaper than percentage-based credit card fees as soon as you are wiring more than 1000 USD. You can save money with bank wires for all big amounts of money to be sent.

Tip 3: Bank Wires are normally faster than credit card payments. Bank wires will arrive in 1 to 3 business days. Credit card payments may take 5 to 30 business days to be accessible for us. Save time with bank wires: The faster we get the money, the faster we ship your product, and the faster you can sell it and make a profit.

CONS

Banks are legally obliged to inform you beforehand about intermediary bank charges so that you can decide to carry those fees and avoid balance payments. Sadly all too often bank employees nowadays don’t even know that intermediary banks are involved in international bank wires.

And even if they know, it is rather the rule than the exemption that bank employees will NOT inform you about intermediary banks being involved. Therefore it is your responsibility to ask and inquire when making a bank wire.

2.) PayPal – why we don’t accept it anymore.

PayPal does officially promote that they charge 5 % fees. However, in Peru PayPal has an exclusive contract with Interbank. To receive PayPal payments we must have an account with Interbank. With PayPal in reality charging 6.2 % (and not 5) and Interbank charging an additional 1.8 %, the total charges amount to a whopping 8%.

As if that were not enough, PayPal did change its client policies in 2022. They now want to keep payments for 30+ days on the PayPal account before they liberate it for companies to get access to the money. Completely unacceptable to us.

3.) Western Union – why it does not work with this company

Simple: Western Union does not accept commercial payments in Peru. It can only be used for money transfers between private people.

Simple: Western Union does not accept commercial payments in Peru. It can only be used for money transfers between private people.

4.) Are Credit Card Payments safer than other payment ways?

Marketing is all. Many people wrongly believe (especially in the USA) that credit card payments are safer than other payment ways. This seems to be the result of marketing campaigns indicating that clients could get their money back in case of fraud or if they are not satisfied with the product. Maybe that works with e-commerce rules within one country. It, however, does not work like this with international payments (sorry for the spoiler). 

On the other hand, from our point of view, we need to be very careful in accepting credit card payments. According to international statistics, more than 70% of credit card fraud is NOT committed by vendors but by buyers. We already suffered several credit card fraud attempts. So we are reluctant to accept credit card payments.

5.) You still can pay us with credit card – using READYPAY

After stopping to work with PayPal we had to find an alternative payment way. We discovered ReadyPay, a very safe payment way that can be used with Mastercard, Visa, Amex, and Diners at a 5% charge

It works a bit differently than PayPal as it incorporates several additional safety features.

To pay with ReadyPay WE have to create a payment link and send it to you. The link can only be opened and used once. If something goes wrong the link becomes invalid and we have to create a new link for you.

The platform requires an additional ID step. To make a payment link we need to provide a passport number, National ID number, or driver’s license number to ReadyPay. this way the platform can ensure that only the right person can use the payment link.

Finally, the credit card to be used must be verified by the credit institute you have it from and it must be liberated for international payments. If this is not the case the payment will be blocked, you then have to first verify the card and we have to provide a new payment link. 

6.) Incredible news for our INDIAN Crystal Shop clients

If you have a crystal shop in India you can now forget about any problem related to international payments.

Tip 5) Since January 2024 we are working in a joint venture with the Indian crystal company “Crystal Divine”. You can now order from us but pay in Rupees to Crystal Divine in Mumbai.

You do not have to pay any international bank charges anymore

You don’t have to pay any currency exchange fees anymore.

Contact us for more information.

7.) Cryptocurrencies

For some countries bank wires, international payment fees, and available payment ways are so difficult and/or expensive, that cryptocurrency payments are the only viable alternative.

Tip 6) We do accept payments of smaller amounts in Bitcoin and Ether.

Contact us for more information.