Employee Benefits in Germany: Clear Guide for US Employers
This guide to employee benefits in Germany will cover all you need to stay compliant and provide the best additional benefits to attract talent.
Best Small Business Payment Systems: 12 Lifesavers
Looking for the best small business payment systems to streamline all your transactions? We’re about to navigate the top business payment services out there, designed to provide optimal payment solutions to small businesses like yours.
Among our options, we have Wise Business. Though not a payment processor in the traditional sense, Wise is ideal for international payments. Let’s go over some ideal payment systems for your small business needs!
Looking to save on international business payments?
Get a Wise Business account >>
Trustpilot Rating: Excellent with 190,000+ reviews¹
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Wise Business
Wise Business is here to provide a quality account that not only lowers your fees but also help you run your business more efficiently. Let's take a look at some of the key parts of the Wise Business account.
| The Wise International Business Advantage: |
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Send payments
Wise helps you send payments instantly, transparently, and safely. With Wise, you can send and receive international payments in 40 currencies, all at the touch of a button. This is especially useful for businesses and freelancers with an international reach who need to pay or get paid.
The process is so easy that you’ll only need a few details to send money to your recipient's account—no mysterious codes or complex steps. The money also gets there quickly, often more quickly than via most other providers.
Receive payments
Wise also lets you receive payments in multiple currencies. With a Wise account, you'll get unique account details for 9 global currencies, including USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD, and more. This way, your clients can pay you just like they pay a local, and there's no need for costly fees on your end to receive your hard-earned funds.
Pricing for service
Wise keeps their pricing transparent, so you always know what you’ll be charged. Find a list of fees here.
There's no subscription cost for opening or maintaining a Wise Business account. For each transaction, you'll pay a small, flat fee and a percentage of the amount converted. The exact cost can vary depending on the currency route, but you'll still be saving when sending money abroad.
Get a Wise Business account >>
QuickBooks
You might have heard of QuickBooks as a robust financial management tool, but it’s a platform that’s also big in the world of business payment methods. If you’re looking for an all-in-one small business payment solution with great accounting solutions, this one might be suitable for you.
Send payments
Whether you're settling bills or paying your staff, Quickbooks makes sending payments easy. Automated payments mean less time doing paperwork and more time focusing on growing your business. QuickBooks also has something called Bill Pay, which offers you the luxury of paying your bills directly from your Quickbooks account.² That way, you get an organized electronic trail for every transaction.
Receive payments
Receiving payments is also smooth with Quickbooks Payments. You can take payments with credit cards, ACH, Apple Pay, and more, ensuring you have a stress-free ride to receiving your money.³ And what’s more, you can request payments with professional invoices or simple direct payment links anytime.
Pricing for service
Pricing operates on a month-to-month schedule, at $30/month for the Simple Start plan and [$55/month for the Essentials plan.⁴ With the Essentials plan, you can connect up to 3 sales channels instead of 1 and manage and pay bills, among other features.
See the Best Banks for Small Businesses >>
FreshBooks
FreshBooks has some similarities to QuickBooks but keeps things more simple and straightforward for sole proprietors, freelancers, and small businesses. If you deal with more low-volume transactions and want a simpler UI, this could be a better alternative. QuickBooks has advanced features that could appeal to those with more complex needs.
Send payments
The platform provides a variety of ways for clients to pay, just like QuickBooks. Whether it’s with a credit card or bank transfer, clients won’t need to create an account to do so. With Client Accounts, they can also save payment information, so paying invoices is easy work.⁴
Receive payments
The whole process of receiving payments from clients is simplified on the platform. FreshBooks Payments lets customers pay directly through invoices in whatever way they choose, or if you’re not a business that sends out invoices, you can post Checkout Links so customers can click and pay.⁵ If you need to automate recurring billing, you can do that with Advanced Payments, which lets you accept credit card payments online and over the phone.
Pricing for service
FreshBooks has transparent, value-packed pricing models that scale to match the size of your business.⁶ The Lite plan is priced at $17/month, the Plus plan is priced at $30, and the Premium plan is priced at $55/month. If your business has more specialized needs, you can talk to a specialist to customize a plan.
PayPal
PayPal is one of the world’s best-known online payment systems for small businesses. Their brand name alone is enough for businesses to feel like they can trust them, and they have a strong feature set that entices people to use the platform. While personal accounts let you manage your money and make payments online, business accounts come with features to help you accept payments and financial services to manage your business.
Send payments
Sending money is quick and handy as you can use a bank account, PayPal balance, or a debit and credit card. All you need to do is choose a recipient, enter the amount, and tap/click send. You can even send money in other currencies using the Xoom service.⁷
Receive payments
Businesses can choose to get paid in numerous ways, including a physical POS system, invoicing, online checkout, and installment payments. The main benefit of PayPal is that it works with marketing and ecommerce tools and offers a ton of business payment methods, including Pay Later.
Pricing for service
Even though there isn’t a monthly charge to use the platform, PayPal’s service comes at a bit of a cost.⁸ At 3.49% + $0.49 per transaction for PayPal payment options, it’s not the cheapest pick, especially for businesses who are just starting out. But keep in mind you do get great perks like Seller Protection to prevent chargebacks.
For credit and debit cards, the fee is 2.59% + $0.49 per transaction. If you’re paying or accepting in international currencies, there are additional fixed and percentage fees.
Learn More: Compare Square and PayPal: POS, Business Accounts, and Fees
Payoneer
Payoneer is a suitable platform for businesses that operate globally. As international transactions can get complicated, the platform irons out those complexities and lets you send and receive payments with ease.
Send payments
Payoneer separates businesses by category - for sending, small and medium businesses paying under $50,000/month, and marketplaces or enterprises paying over $50,000/month.⁹ While the former lets you pay freelancers and other service providers anywhere in the world, the latter gives you more online payment methods for small businesses and offers secure mass payouts and tax, VAT, and early payment services.
Receive payments
When it comes to receiving payments, Payoneer divides up businesses here too.¹⁰ The first is the freelancer, agency, or service provider plan, which helps you get paid by leading marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr. You can also get paid by global clients and withdraw your earnings at low rates.
If you’re in the other category - the online seller one - you can get paid by leading marketplaces like Amazon and Wish. It’s particularly useful for paying your VAT and if you manage multiple Amazon stores. You can also get low withdrawal rates on this plan.
Pricing for service
Payoneer operates on a pay-as-you-go fee structure, just like Wise. Their pricing is transparent, but there are more fees, including a 3% credit card charge for payment requests and potential fees based on the marketplace or network you’re working with. ¹¹ Withdrawals to bank accounts of other currencies and general payments will also incur up to 2% of the transaction amount. There’s also a fixed fee of $1.5 to send money in the same currency (USD).
Revolut
Revolut is certainly an innovator in the world of online banking. They brand themselves as a financial platform in the fintech landscape, offering many features ranging from budget tracking to built-in analytics. It even gives you the ability to hold money in 25+ currencies at real exchange rates (which is just shy of the 50+ that Wise can hold) and, generally, makes all aspects of financial management easier.¹²
Send payments
Revolut lets businesses send money domestically and internationally at low rates. The platform has a recurring and scheduled payments feature on both free and paid plans and a bulk payments feature for those on a paid plan. Before sending out a transfer, you’ll be shown the current FX rate, the bank transfer fee, the FX fee, and the final total.
Receive payments
With a dedicated multi-currency business account, you can accept funds from anywhere around the globe. Revolut has both in-person and online payment gateway options, such as a checkout experience, payment integrations, QR codes, payment links, and their very own in-person Revolut Reader.¹³
Pricing for service
The positive thing about Revolut is that it offers a Free plan. However, it comes with more fees than the paid ones.¹⁴ For example, each international payment will cost £3, and foreign exchange rates will be marked up by 0.4%.
The Grow plan is priced at £25/month and comes with 10 fee-free international payments a month and 100 fee-free local payments. You also won’t get charged the 0.4% markup unless you go over the £10,000 monthly allowance. For more benefits and allowances, you can go up to the Scale plan at £100/month or opt for a custom Enterprise plan.
Sending Money Abroad: Try Wise Business
The Wise Business account could be a lifesaver for your business through offering you low-cost, easy way to send and receive money internationally. Let's start thinking of how much you could save on your payments to suppliers, wholesalers, merchants, or your foreign workers.
Plastiq
Plastiq(see Plastiq alternatives) is a bit of a unique payment system. It provides payment options for small businesses such as credit cards and short-term payments so they can better manage their cash flow. With Plastiq Pay, you can get financing without strings and repay on your terms. With Plastiq Accept, you can accept credit cards with zero merchant fees.
Send payments
Plastiq turns every payment into a potential rewards opportunity – since you can pay for virtually any business expense with your credit card through Plastiq, even if your vendor doesn't accept cards. This way, every dollar spent has the chance to turn into rewards points or miles, depending on your credit card’s rewards program.
Receive payments
The main draw of Plastiq Accept is that you can accept credit cards without any merchant fees – something that will bolster your relationships with customers. Payment links or QR codes can be sent through invoice, text, or email, and customers can pay through credit, short-term financing, and more.
Pricing for service
While regular Plastiq Pay is free, Plastiq Pay Pro ($59/month) comes with perks like automatic accounting software syncing and bulk pay.¹⁵ If you want to take things even further, you can opt for Plastiq Pay Enterprise ($119/month). Plastiq Accept works the same way, where there’s a free plan and a Pro plan at $59/month. If you want an Enterprise plan, you’ll have to contact the company.
Braintree
Braintree is a PayPal service that comes with its own special features and a more comprehensive approach to small business online payments(see Braintree alternatives). It’s an ideal system if you need to accept and process payments through an app or website.
Send payments
Braintree offers a payout service from Hyperwallet (also a PayPal service). It allows you to send payouts to sellers and freelancers in 200+ countries/regions in a variety of ways.¹⁶ If you’re looking to simplify the payout process, you can use API calls or batch file upload and do so that way.
Receive payments
Braintree Direct comes with a ready-made Drop-in UI, or you can create your own customized UI if that’s what you prefer. With recurring billing for subscription-based plans and popular payment methods available, you can enjoy a smooth payment system that’s optimized for web and mobile.¹⁷
Pricing for service
Pricing depends on the method of payment. If you’re using cards and digital wallets, it’ll be 2.59% +$.49 per transaction, while if you choose Venmo, it’ll be 3.49% + $.49 per transaction. If you want additional features, pricing will depend on your business’s pricing model.¹⁸
👉 Looking to learn more about payment processing tools? Find out more below!
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Square
You might have seen Square’s iconic square logo on payment processors in retail stores or coffee shops. The company is dedicated to crafting online payments and POS systems tailored to specific industries. They even provide other products like loyalty programs and banking products.
Send payments
Sending payments to vendors or employees is simple with Square Cash.¹⁹ Customers send an email out to the person they’re paying, and after the recipient enters their card details, the money is directly transferred to their bank account. There’s also a dedicated full-service payroll product that includes employee benefits and tax filings.
Receive payments
With Square, there are endless ways to receive money. For in-person payments, there are sleek registers, terminals, and readers, while online payments can be made through online checkout, invoices, payment links, a POS app, or even installments with Afterpay.
Pricing for service
While Square has a fantastic reputation, it’s known to be quite pricey. In-person payments come with a 2.6% + 10¢ processing fee; online payments come with a 2.9% + 30¢ processing fee, remote payments have a 3.5% + 15¢ processing fee, and buy-now-pay-later payments have a 6% + 30¢ fee – these numbers are for each transaction.²⁰
Maxio (Chargify)
Previously known as Chargify, Maxio is an advanced financial platform made for B2B SaaS companies. While Chargify was best known for its focus on billing and subscription management, Maxio brings together Chargify and their automated financial operations service SaasOptics.
Send payments
Maxio doesn’t seem to have an option for sending out payments, so if you’re looking for a solution that has this capability, you might want to choose another payment system.
Receive payments
With public sign-up pages and self-service billing portals, you can reduce friction in the billing process. Advanced Billing (Growth plan +) even supports many billing and pricing configurations and integrates with dozens of payment providers like Stripe.²¹ Using Maxio, you can also create custom-branded invoices and work with milestone payments for projects. ²²
Pricing for service
The Essentials plan starts at $599/month, while the Growth and Scale plans depend on your individual business.²³
Adyen
Adyen presents itself as a one-stop platform for managing business payments and controlling your finances. This global payment company has solutions built for digital businesses, omnichannel businesses, and platforms and marketplaces.
Send payments
The platform lets you send quick, instant payouts to freelancers, sellers, and vendors with Payouts.²⁴ Whether you need to consolidate payments into a bulk payout or pay in multiple currencies, Adyen has the capabilities to do it. You can also pay out 24/7 in the US, EU, and UK and activate local payouts in 40+ countries.
Receive payments
Adyen presents a unified commerce experience by connecting your online and offline payments. Via web, in-app, or payment link, customers can pay the way they prefer. There are also local payment methods for global customers, such as WeChat Pay for Chinese consumers and TWINT for Swiss consumers.²⁵
Pricing for service
For each transaction, you’ll be charged a fixed processing fee of €0.11 plus a fee depending on the [payment method. For example, Cash App Pay incurs a 2.90% + 30¢ fee, while WeChat Pay has a 3% fee.²⁶
Verifone (2Checkout)
Verifone provides omni-commerce solutions for a range of industries, business sizes, and use cases(see Verifone (2checkout) alternatives). With Verifone Cloud Services, businesses can implement a single unified payments engine across digital and physical sales channels.
Send payments
Like Maxio, Verifone doesn’t offer the option to pay freelancers or suppliers.
Receive payments
You won’t need to worry about diversity when it comes to receiving payments](https://www.verifone.com/en/global/payment-processing.²⁷ That means customers won’t have any trouble paying in their favorite way. Their physical payment options include mobile POS, portables, and more, while digitally, you can provide hosted checkout or API checkout for a more customized experience. There are also subscription payments available to keep revenue flowing.
Pricing for service
If you’re interested in Verifone’s services, contact sales to get details on pricing.
Wise Business: Make instant payments easily and at low-cost
Looking for a simple, low-cost way to make payments or get paid? Wise Business helps over 300k businesses save while conducting overseas transactions. This smart digital alternative to traditional banking offers digital payments that are both convenient, transparent, and instant.
Built specifically with small businesses in mind, Wise Business offers a ton of perks that make it super attractive for companies like yours.
Wise Business has no hidden fees or exchange rate markups. Plus, their international account is a game-changer for businesses dealing with multiple currencies. Whether you're paying freelancers abroad or accepting ecommerce payments from customers, Wise Business has got your back.
| Some key features of Wise Business include: |
|---|
| Better visibility and organization of business finances. This is helpful for account reconciliations and audits. |
| Administration controls for users. It’s possible to allow team members to carry out specific tasks. |
| Receive payments from ecommerce platforms (such as Amazon or Stripe) |
| Create invoices using the Wise invoice generator or invoice templates. |
| Features for bill payment, including a QuickBooks Bill Pay connection. Bill payments will be synced, matched, and categorized in QuickBooks for simple reconciliation. |
| Batch payment options. This allows the fast payment of up to 1,000 people, by uploading a spreadsheet. |
Get the Wise Business account >>
Free opening for US business accounts
Learn more:
Tipalti Reviews: What you need to know
Stampli Reviews: Pricing, Features, Overview
Amazon Pay Review for US Businesses (2023)
What is Bill.com? Accounts Payable and Receivable
Top Stampli Competitors and Alternatives (2023)
Hyperwallet Account Review
Please see Terms of Use for your region or visit Wise Fees & Pricing for the most up to date pricing and fee information.
Wise is not a bank, but a Money Services Business (MSB) provider and a smart alternative to banks.
Sources:
- https://www.trustpilot.com/review/wise.com
- https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/pay-bills/pay-bills-online-bill-pay/L0joHBWKA_US_en_US
- https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/invoicing/record-invoice-payments-quickbooks-online/L4ZadDW7F_US_en_US
- https://quickbooks.intuit.com/payments/
- https://support.freshbooks.com/hc/en-us/articles/217545097-As-a-Client-How-Do-I-Pay-an-Invoice-With-Online-Payments-
- https://www.freshbooks.com/accept-payments
- https://www.freshbooks.com/pricing
- https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/send-receive-money/send-money
- https://www.paypal.com/business/pricing
- https://discover.payoneer.com/leading-international-payment-solution/en
- https://www.payoneer.com/about/fees/
- https://www.revolut.com/business/money-transfers/
- https://www.revolut.com/business/accept-payments/
- https://www.revolut.com/business/business-account-plans/
- https://www.plastiq.com/pricing/
- https://www.braintreepayments.com/features/payouts
- https://www.braintreepayments.com/products/braintree-direct
- https://www.braintreepayments.com/braintree-pricing
- https://squareup.com/us/en/press/square-cash-makes-sending-money-as-easy-as-sending-an-email
- https://squareup.com/us/en/payments
- https://www.maxio.com/product/advanced-billing
- https://www.maxio.com/product/milestone-based-projects
- https://www.maxio.com/pricing
- https://www.adyen.com/payouts
- https://www.adyen.com/payment-methods
- https://www.adyen.com/pricing
- https://www.verifone.com/en/global/payment-processing
*Please see terms of use and product availability for your region or visit Wise fees and pricing for the most up to date pricing and fee information.
This publication is provided for general information purposes and does not constitute legal, tax or other professional advice from Wise Payments Limited or its subsidiaries and its affiliates, and it is not intended as a substitute for obtaining advice from a financial advisor or any other professional.
We make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether expressed or implied, that the content in the publication is accurate, complete or up to date.
Money without borders
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