Buying Foreign Currency for Companies: Optimize Your Cross-Border Flows
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- Buying foreign currency as a business has an often invisible cost: the bank applies a client rate that includes a margin on top of the interbank rate. This markup averages between 1.5% and 2.5% of the volume traded.
- Order of magnitude: on annual currency purchases of 2 million francs, this margin comes to CHF 30,000 to 50,000, a cost often buried under the "financial expenses" line in the accounts.
- SWIFT fees weigh on supplier relations: correspondent banks deduct unpredictable fees. For a transfer in SHA mode (shared fees), a deduction of CHF 30 is enough for the supplier not to receive the full amount of their invoice.
- Account-to-account transfers: converting between your own CHF and foreign-currency accounts through a specialist provider avoids the margin of the sending or receiving bank. With ibani, the commission is kept separate from the market rate and known in advance, and funds are routed by its partner banks over local payment systems (SEPA, SIC) rather than SWIFT.
What are the financial stakes of B2B foreign currency purchases?
Whether it's a Swiss SME needing to pay suppliers in the Eurozone, or an international company sourcing in US dollars, acquiring foreign exchange is not just a simple monetary conversion. It is a financial process that, when poorly managed, directly burdens the company's net margin.
The Problem with Exchange Rate Margins (Spread)
The majority of companies tacitly delegate the conversion of their funds to their historical bank. However, the exchange rate applied by your banking institution almost always includes a hidden margin. The difference between the interbank rate (the market rate) and the client rate constitutes this "spread". To gauge this gap for yourself, compare the rate your bank applies with the real market rate shown by our converter.
On average, this banking markup varies between 1.5% and 2.5% of the transactional volume. On an annual purchase of 2 million francs, a company can thus lose between 30,000 and 50,000 CHF in pure friction costs, an expense often buried in the overall accounting under "financial fees".
The table below applies this range, together with ibani's published grid, to the same annual volume of 2 million francs:
| Exchange margin applied | Cost on CHF 2,000,000 exchanged per year |
|---|---|
| High bank margin: 2.5% | CHF 50,000 |
| Low bank margin: 1.5% | CHF 30,000 |
| Highest tier of ibani's published grid: 0.40% (transactions under CHF 10,000) | CHF 8,000 |
| Lowest tier of ibani's published grid: 0.15% (transactions from CHF 250,000 to CHF 1 million) | CHF 3,000 |
International Transfers and SWIFT Opacity
Besides the exchange rate, the channel used to route the funds represents the second area of financial loss. Classic international transfers rely on the SWIFT network, requiring the intervention of correspondent banks. These banks charge unpredictable intermediation fees (known as "lifting fees"), making it impossible to accurately guarantee the final amount credited to the beneficiary's account.
Why do account-to-account transfers give better control of your cash?
An effective strategy for companies with multiple entities or multi-currency accounts is the account-to-account transfer. This mechanism is used in two main scenarios:
- Currency Provisioning: The Swiss company transfers CHF from its main account to a specialized platform, which transparently converts the funds and transfers them to the company's EUR (or USD) account, held at another bank.
- Revenue Repatriation: A company billing abroad receives foreign currency in a local account, and periodically organizes a repatriation to its base currency (CHF) without suffering the exchange rate penalties of the receiving bank.
Account-to-account transfers via a financial service provider (Fintech) allow you to bypass the pricing opacity of traditional banks, giving you full control over the execution of the currency exchange.
How can you centralize the management of international payments?
Optimizing exchange rates must be accompanied by operational simplification. Growing companies need visibility, security, and speed in the execution of their international payments.
To address this issue, Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) turn to solutions offering intuitive and centralized interfaces. Rather than multiplying expensive bank connections, they prefer a single access point for all their foreign exchange and transfer operations.
The ibani Solution: Transparency and Performance
As a Swiss financial intermediary affiliated with SO-FIT, ibani.com provides a B2B infrastructure designed to specifically solve the friction points related to international payments. Unlike opaque models, we clearly separate the market rate from our remuneration. By integrating our services into your treasury processes, you benefit from:
- Transparent Pricing: ibani bases its rates on the real-time interbank rate, plus a published, clear margin known in advance.
- Sliding-scale margin: From 0.40% to 0.15% depending on the amount of each transaction, with custom pricing above one million francs.
- Local payments: ibani has your currencies routed by its partner banks over local payment systems (SEPA for the euro, SIC for the franc), which in most cases avoids the expensive SWIFT network.
- User-Friendly Platform: A simple online interface to manage your beneficiaries, track your transfers, and initiate your account-to-account transfers in just a few clicks.
Net Margin Simulator
Estimate your annual savings by centralizing your FX flows with ibani (comparison based on an average observed bank margin of 2% and on ibani's maximum margin of 0.40%; depending on the amount of each transaction, it goes down to 0.15%).
Frequently Asked Questions (B2B FX)
Official sources
- Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA): instruments, participating countries and legal framework — European Central Bank, accessed 29 September 2026
- Payment transactions: the Swiss Interbank Clearing (SIC) payment system — Swiss National Bank, accessed 29 September 2026