How to invoice international clients (currency, fees, and VAT basics)

The first time you invoice a client in another country, the invoice itself is the easy part. What trips people up is everything downstream: which currency to bill in, how much a bank quietly takes before the money reaches your account, and whether you're supposed to charge tax on a cross-border sale at all. None of this is complicated once you know the defaults. It's just rarely explained anywhere before you need it.

Which currency should you invoice in

There are two options: your currency, or theirs. Picking your own currency feels safer. You know exactly what you'll receive, with no exposure to exchange rate swings before payment. But it puts the FX risk and the mental math on the client: they have to convert an unfamiliar total, and if the rate moves before they pay, the amount their bank pulls won't match what they expected, a common reason cross-border invoices stall while the client double-checks the number.

Invoicing in the client's currency removes that friction. They see a number they can evaluate instantly, with no conversion step between reading the invoice and trusting it. The tradeoff is that you absorb the FX risk: if their currency weakens against yours before they pay, you receive less than you priced for. That rarely matters for a one-off project, but for a retainer, decide upfront: price in a buffer, review your rate periodically, or invoice in a stable third currency like USD or EUR. Put whatever you land on in writing, the same way you would any other term. See freelance payment terms explained for how to document terms like this.

There's no universal right answer here, but a reasonable default: for a single project or short engagement, invoice in the client's currency to reduce disputes. For a long-term retainer where FX exposure adds up, invoice in your own currency, or agree on a rate-review clause upfront.

What FX and bank fees actually do to your invoice total

This is the part that surprises people the first time: the amount you invoice and the amount that lands in your account are often not the same number, and the gap isn't always your bank's fault.

A cross-border payment can lose money at several points:

• Currency conversion markup: if the payment is converted from the client's currency to yours, whoever does the conversion (the client's bank, your bank, or a payment processor) applies a spread above the market rate. This is usually the biggest single cost, often 1-4%, and it's rarely itemized as a separate line. It's baked into the rate you're given.
• Outgoing wire fees: euro transfers within SEPA cost the same as a domestic transfer, but outside SEPA or in another currency, many banks charge the sender a flat fee (commonly €15-50) to send an international wire.
• Intermediary/correspondent bank fees: international wires often pass through one or more correspondent banks before reaching yours, and each can deduct a handling fee along the way. This is why a wire sent for exactly €1,000 sometimes arrives as €965, with no single party able to fully explain where the rest went.
• Receiving fees: some banks also charge the recipient just for accepting an incoming international transfer.

Individually these look small. Stacked together on a mid-size invoice, they can easily eat 3-6% of the total, and because they're deducted before the money reaches you rather than added on top for the client to pay, you're the one absorbing the shortfall unless you've explicitly stated otherwise on the invoice.

Why a payment link often nets more than a wire transfer

For small-to-mid invoices, a hosted pay-by-card (or pay-by-link) option frequently outperforms a bank wire, even though card processing has its own fees. The difference is less about the fee percentage than what each method actually costs in practice.

A wire transfer stacks the fees described above: sender fee, possible intermediary fees, possible receiving fee, none of them visible until the money lands short. A card payment through a payment processor has one transparent fee taken off the top, with no correspondent-bank black box in between. For a €500 or €2,000 invoice, that transparency alone often means more money reaches you, not less.

The bigger factor is speed, not just fees. A wire transfer requires the client to open their banking app, manually enter your IBAN or SWIFT/BIC details, and trust nothing's mistyped, exactly where copy-paste errors and rejected transfers happen; a payment link just requires a card and a click. A technically cheaper method a client keeps putting off is worth less than a slightly costlier one they use immediately. The same principle is covered in how to write an invoice clients pay on time.

VAT and tax basics for invoicing across borders

This is the part where general guidance is genuinely useful, and where you also need to stop trusting general guidance the moment real money is on the line. Rules differ by your country, your client's country, whether your client is a business or a private individual, and your own registration status, so treat everything below as orientation, not instruction.

A few patterns that hold in a lot of places, especially within the EU:

• B2B cross-border sales often shift the tax obligation to the client. Under the EU's reverse-charge mechanism (Article 196 of the EU VAT Directive (opens in a new tab)), a VAT-registered freelancer in one EU country invoicing a VAT-registered business in another EU country typically doesn't charge VAT. The client self-assesses it. The invoice still needs to reference this: Article 226(11a) requires the mention "Reverse charge", usually alongside both VAT numbers. It just carries no VAT line.
• You generally don't charge your home country's sales tax or VAT to a foreign business client. Domestic rates are designed for domestic transactions. Charging your local VAT rate abroad is one of the more common mistakes freelancers make copying a domestic template without adjusting it.
• B2C is a different story. Selling to individual consumers abroad, rather than businesses, often triggers different rules. Sometimes tax is based on where the customer is located rather than where you are, particularly for digital services.
• Being outside the EU changes the mechanics, not the underlying question. Freelancers outside the EU invoicing EU clients, or vice versa, still need to work out whether tax applies and where. The reverse-charge label is an EU concept, but "who's responsible for the tax" is a question every cross-border invoice has to answer.

What an international invoice needs that a domestic one doesn't

Beyond currency and tax handling, a few fields matter more once a client is in another country:

• The currency, stated explicitly: "Total: 1,500" is ambiguous the moment your client isn't using the same currency as you. Use the currency code (EUR, USD, GBP), not just a symbol that could mean several things.
• Your VAT/tax ID and the client's, if reverse charge or a similar mechanism applies: without both numbers on the invoice, the client's accounts team often can't process it as a valid cross-border B2B invoice at all.
• Full banking details for international transfer, if you're offering wire as an option: IBAN and SWIFT/BIC (or equivalent for non-SEPA countries), not just a domestic account number that only works within your own country's banking system.
• A clear statement of who absorbs currency conversion or bank fees: without this, disputes over a short payment default to "not my problem" on both sides.
• Your business address including country: obvious in hindsight, easy to leave off when you're used to invoicing people who already know where you are.

Get these details right the first time and most of the follow-up questions that slow down cross-border payments never get asked in the first place.