How to receive a payment from an overseas client
If you close deals with international buyers, investors, or counterparties, you already know that getting paid across borders is a fundamentally different problem than getting paid domestically. The deal itself may be done — contracts signed, conditions satisfied, everyone aligned — and still the money takes days to arrive, arrives short of what was sent, or triggers a compliance hold at a bank nobody anticipated. For brokers, agents, closing attorneys, and deal advisors who work with foreign payers, the payment leg is not an afterthought. It is where earned income either lands cleanly or gets tangled in infrastructure that was never designed for speed. This article covers what actually happens when an overseas client sends you money, why the delays occur where they do, what each scenario looks like in practice, and how to receive international payments with the certainty your work deserves.
Why international payments are structurally different
The starting point is understanding that a wire transfer from overseas is not simply a domestic wire that travels farther. It is a fundamentally different routing problem.
Many international transfers do not move directly from one bank to another. Instead, they may pass through intermediary institutions — often called correspondent banks — before reaching the recipient’s account. Each of those institutions is an independent entity with its own systems, schedules, compliance obligations, and fee structures. The exact path depends on the countries, currencies, and banking relationships involved. Each institution in the chain may have its own processing schedules, compliance procedures, and cutoff times.
This architecture — called the correspondent banking network — is decades old. It was built for institutional settlement, not for the kind of high-value professional payment that closes when a deal closes. A fundamental challenge with international payments is that banks in different countries often use systems that don’t naturally connect. Wire transfers bridge those gaps with the SWIFT network, which connects thousands of banks worldwide and ensures standardized communication between them. But “standardized communication” does not mean fast communication, and it certainly does not mean predictable arrival.
According to the Bank for International Settlements, international bank payments commonly take two to five days to reach final settlement as they move through correspondent banking chains, batch cut-off times, and manual reconciliation processes. For a professional waiting on a commission check or a closing disbursement, those days are not abstract. They represent liquidity withheld, delayed disbursements to co-brokers, and the anxiety of chasing confirmation from a bank that may be on the other side of the planet.
The correspondent chain: what it does to your payment
To understand delay, you need to understand how correspondent routing actually works.
Your overseas client’s bank sends a SWIFT message with payment instructions. If that sending bank has a direct correspondent relationship with your receiving bank, the payment routes cleanly. When both banks have commercial relationships with Nostro and Vostro accounts, SWIFT transfers are direct and immediate. But most banks — especially regional or community banks that professionals commonly use — do not have direct bilateral relationships with banks in every country.
If your bank and the recipient’s bank don’t have a direct relationship, the SWIFT network routes the payment through one to three intermediary banks, each adding time and fees. A transfer from a small U.S. bank to a regional bank in Southeast Asia, for example, might pass through two or three intermediaries.
Here is what that looks like in a real transaction. Imagine an international buyer in Germany wiring a commission to a broker in the United States. The buyer’s German bank sends a SWIFT message. If that bank has no direct relationship with the broker’s U.S. bank, the payment routes through a major European correspondent — say, a large bank in Frankfurt or London — which then routes it to a U.S. correspondent before it finally credits the receiving bank. In this scenario, the sender bank, the two intermediary banks, as well as the recipient bank could all levy a fee on the payment as the money passes through the chain of connections.
The result is that the recipient — the professional who did the work and closed the deal — may receive less than the agreed amount and receive it later than expected, for reasons entirely outside anyone’s control at the deal table.
What each bank in the chain takes
For international transactions, the fee structure becomes more complex as it often includes three distinct layers: the flat service fee, intermediary bank deductions, and foreign exchange (FX) markups.
SWIFT transfer fees typically range from $25–$50 for sending, $10–$20 for receiving, plus $10–$30 per intermediary bank involved. Currency conversion markups of 1–4% over the mid-market rate add to the total cost.
On a $50,000 commission payment with two intermediaries in the chain, that math adds up fast. The intermediaries deduct silently — not from a separate invoice, but directly from the principal in transit. It’s common for recipients to receive less than expected because of intermediary deductions, leading to headaches for payment reconciliation. If you have agreed to split that commission with a co-broker or a referral partner, the shortfall either comes out of your pocket or triggers a follow-up wire to make the other party whole.
There is also a fee structure that determines who absorbs what. In SWIFT parlance, the three options are OUR, SHA, and BEN. OUR means the sender covers all the fees, so the recipient gets the full amount. SHA means both sender and recipient split charges. BEN means the beneficiary shoulders all fees; the transfer arrives net of total charges. Most international wires default to SHA, which means you will receive less than the gross amount sent — and you may not know how much less until the funds actually land.
The delay triggers you can control and the ones you cannot
Not every delay in an inbound international payment is the correspondent chain’s fault. Some of the worst holdups in real-world transactions are preventable, and understanding them helps you set up inbound payment instructions correctly the first time.
Incorrect or incomplete banking details
If the sender doesn’t input every detail perfectly, your correspondent may receive the funds without clear information on the final beneficiary. This ambiguity can cause frustrating delays as they work to trace the transaction and identify the recipient.
This is not a theoretical problem. A transposed digit in an account number, a missing intermediary bank identifier, or an outdated SWIFT code can route funds to an institution that has to manually investigate and forward them. In many cases, transfers with incorrect information are returned to the sender. However, the return process can take time and may involve fees. In a transaction with a hard closing deadline, a return and re-send can cause the deal to fail to fund on time.
When you give wire instructions to an overseas client, give them completely: your bank’s full name and address, your full account name and number, the correct SWIFT/BIC code for your specific bank (not a correspondent’s code used on your behalf), and — when relevant — an IBAN or routing number. The longer the chain of banks involved, the more likely it is that important data gets stripped out along the way. The more complete your instructions, the shorter the chain tends to be.
Cutoff times and time zones
Every bank has a daily processing deadline — the latest time a transfer can be submitted and still be processed that day. Submit after the cut-off, and the payment waits until the next business day. Cut-off times vary by bank and transfer type, typically falling between 2 pm and 5 pm local time. For international wires, they’re often earlier than domestic ones.
SWIFT cutoffs are often earlier — around 2:00 PM — to allow for manual compliance reviews and correspondent bank messaging.
When your client is in Tokyo, Singapore, or Dubai, their bank’s processing day may open and close before your business day has even started. A wire your client initiates on Tuesday afternoon their time may not enter your bank’s processing queue until Thursday. The compounding effect of multiple time-zone handoffs is why a simple two-hop transfer can still take four or five business days — not because anything went wrong, but because the windows of overlap between active processing hours are narrow.
International transfers are processed only on banking days. If the sending or receiving country has a weekend or public holiday, the transfer will be held until banking operations resume. A wire timed around a public holiday in the sender’s country — or a bank holiday that your client may not have flagged — can add two to three days with no notice and no recourse.
Compliance holds and AML screening
Cross-border transfers are often subject to compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) and other regulatory checks, which can add processing time. This is not negotiable. Every bank in the chain runs its own screening, and certain factors — such as larger transaction amounts, unusual patterns, or payments involving higher-risk jurisdictions — may trigger additional review. When this occurs, processing may take longer.
For professionals in real estate, advisory, and deal facilitation, the transaction sizes are often exactly the sizes that trigger secondary review. A $150,000 commission wire from a new counterparty in a jurisdiction the receiving bank doesn’t frequently see is precisely the kind of transaction that gets flagged for a compliance analyst to review manually. If any bank in the chain cannot process the transfer due to compliance holds, maintenance, or sanctions screening, the payment stalls or is returned, causing further delays and uncertainty.
You cannot shortcut a compliance review, and you should not try. What you can do is help your overseas client structure the payment instruction with a clear purpose-of-payment reference — a deal reference number, “commission re: [property address],” or similar — so that a reviewing analyst has immediate context and can clear the payment without a lengthy back-and-forth.
Corridor-specific friction
Not all international payment corridors are equal. Settlement timing can also depend on the specific country corridor — the pair of countries involved. Some corridors have more established infrastructure and direct connections. Others may require additional routing steps, which can extend processing times.
Not all corridors are equal. Payments to major markets — such as the UK or EU — usually clear faster than transfers to emerging markets, where extra checks or correspondent banks are involved.
If your overseas client is in Western Europe, a SEPA Instant payment within Europe settles in seconds, but it cannot reach a U.S. bank account directly — it must convert to a SWIFT wire at some point. If your client is in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, or Latin America, the correspondent chain is typically longer and the compliance screening more intensive. A wire from a UAE-based entity to a U.S. broker may pass through three institutions, each running its own AML pass, before the funds reach you. Build that into your timeline expectations.
How deal structure interacts with inbound payment logistics
The question of how you receive a payment from an overseas client is not purely a banking question — it is also a deal structure question. Who is paying whom, in what currency, under what contractual terms, and how the proceeds split at the point of receipt all interact with the international wire mechanics.
When funds need to split at the destination
Many deals involve split disbursements: a listing broker and a buyer’s broker, a referral partner who sourced the overseas client, a closing attorney’s fee, an advisor’s retainer. Traditionally, the way this works is that one party receives the full wire and then initiates secondary domestic transfers to the other parties. This creates lag. It also creates an administrative burden and a reconciliation headache — particularly when the inbound wire arrives short of the agreed amount because of intermediary deductions.
The cleaner approach is to route the split at the payment level rather than after the fact. When each party’s wallet or account address is embedded in the payment instruction before the funds move, the split happens once, on the way in, rather than requiring a separate domestic distribution step. This is exactly where Shaka functions: the professional who closes the deal sets up a payment link with recipient wallets and split percentages already defined, so when the overseas client pays, every party receives their share directly and simultaneously — no secondary wires, no float between parties, no reconciliation after the fact.
Currency considerations: in what currency should you receive?
If your fee is denominated in USD and your overseas client is sending from a EUR or GBP account, the conversion happens somewhere in the chain. The question is where — and at whose rate.
Your receiving bank will typically apply its own exchange rate markup if it receives the funds in foreign currency and converts them into USD for your account. That markup is applied after the fact, on a rate you did not negotiate, and it is disclosed only on a post-transaction statement. The invisible fees are the margins embedded within the exchange rate. A 3% FX markup on a $100,000 payment represents a $3,000 invisible cost.
If you have any ability to specify in your deal documentation that the payment be made in USD — as a wire from the client’s bank directly in USD, converting at their end — you shift the conversion obligation to the payer’s side, where they have better visibility into the rate being applied. This is worth building into your payment instructions on any deal where the client’s functional currency differs from yours.
Alternatively, if your firm regularly receives payments from a particular market — say, Canadian buyers, UK investors, German commercial purchasers — opening a multi-currency receiving account denominated in those currencies lets you receive cleanly in the sender’s currency and convert on your own schedule at a rate you choose.
Getting the payment before the close versus at the close
In real estate transactions specifically, international wire delays are significantly easier to prevent before closing than to fix during closing week. The earlier reserve funds, wire documentation, and escrow instructions are organized, the lower the risk of AML-related delays or last-minute underwriting conditions.
The same logic applies to your commission or fee. If your deal structure permits, coordinate with your overseas client to initiate the payment well in advance of the closing date. A wire submitted five to seven business days before closing gives the correspondent chain time to route, the compliance review time to clear, and your bank time to post and confirm before anyone is waiting at a table. Most last-minute delays happen because reserve funds were moved too late, wire documentation was incomplete, or international transfers entered AML review too close to the scheduled closing date. The same is true for fee payments. Urgency is the enemy of certainty in international wire transfers.
When something goes wrong: tracing a stuck international wire
Even when you do everything right, international wires sometimes stall. Knowing how to trace one is a practical skill.
Start by contacting the sending institution and requesting a trace using the transaction reference number. If the funds have left the originating account, the institution may be able to provide insight into where the transfer is currently held.
A SWIFT MT103 is the payment confirmation document generated when an international wire is initiated. It contains the originating account, receiving account, intermediary banks, and routing reference. The MT103 identifies the originating account, receiving account, intermediary banks, transfer references, and settlement routing used during the transaction. If your overseas client can provide the MT103 — which their bank issues at the time of sending — you have the reference data needed to trace exactly where in the chain the funds are sitting.
SWIFT GPI (Global Payments Innovation) has improved visibility somewhat. The SWIFT network routes transactions through intermediary banks, with each step timestamped and tracked via the Global Payment Initiative (GPI). Suppliers received the funds in one to two business days, with payment status visible to both sender and recipient. Ask your overseas client whether their bank participates in SWIFT GPI tracking — not all do, particularly smaller regional institutions.
If the wire is lost or misdirected, SWIFT recalls are not immediate reversals. Once requested, the originating bank must coordinate with intermediary and receiving banks to locate and return the funds. Depending on where the transfer is in the settlement process, recalls can take several business days and are not guaranteed to succeed if the funds have already been released into another account. This is why wire accuracy on the front end is worth every minute of double-checking.
The onchain alternative: how settlement changes when the rail changes
For professionals who regularly receive payments from international clients, there is a structurally different approach worth understanding.
Settlement typically occurs within seconds or minutes, depending on the network, and provides transaction finality without reliance on banking hours, batch processing, or intermediary reconciliation. After validation, the stablecoin transfer is recorded on the blockchain and settles directly between wallets.
This is not theoretical. In practical payment flows, a stablecoin can move value across borders quickly, with conversion to local currency at endpoints where required. The structural difference is that there is no correspondent chain. The payment does not route through a sequence of bilateral banking relationships, accumulating delays and fees at each hop. It moves directly from the sender’s wallet to the recipient’s wallet, confirmed on a public ledger, in one transaction.
Because settlement occurs on a public ledger, transaction status and confirmation can be independently verified, reducing disputes and operational uncertainty common in traditional payment rails. For a closing attorney waiting on confirmation before recording, or a broker who needs proof of receipt before releasing documents, that independent verification is material. You do not need to call the bank and wait for a wire verification letter. The transaction is on the chain, and anyone with the reference can confirm it.
The finality characteristic matters as much as the speed. Unlike traditional payment rails that depend on layers of intermediaries, stablecoin transactions settle on-chain, providing near-real-time finality and transparent verification. When an international wire finally arrives after several days in the correspondent system, there is technically a window — brief in most cases — during which it can still be recalled or reversed. Onchain settlement is final. The payment lands, it is confirmed, and it does not come back.
For a deal professional handling a commission split or a multi-party closing disbursement from an overseas payer, Shaka is built for exactly this setup. You create the payment link, set each recipient wallet and the split percentage, and share it with the overseas client. When they pay, funds route directly to each wallet simultaneously in a single transaction — no secondary wires to co-brokers, no float, no partial receipt because one intermediary took a fee. Every party in the split gets paid directly, with the same finality, at the same moment. The corridor between the overseas payer and the recipients is the chain itself, not a chain of banks.
Setting your client up to pay you correctly the first time
The most effective way to receive an international payment cleanly is to remove ambiguity from the instruction before the wire is sent. Clarity on the receiving end determines whether a payment routes smoothly or lands in a trace queue.
Give your overseas client a single, written payment instruction document. It should specify: your bank’s full legal name and address, your account name exactly as it appears on the account (not a nickname or DBA variant), your account number, your bank’s SWIFT/BIC code (your own bank’s code — not a correspondent’s BIC used to reach you indirectly), and a purpose-of-payment reference they can include in the wire memo. If your bank has a preferred intermediary for a given corridor — some U.S. banks have preferred correspondents for European or Asian transactions — get that information from your bank and include it. Accurate BIC/SWIFT codes and complete beneficiary details must be provided to avoid automated rejection and reprocessing delays.
Ask your client to confirm the wire has been sent and to provide the SWIFT MT103 reference as soon as it is available. That reference number is your tracking anchor if anything delays in transit. Tell them to send using OUR fee instructions if possible — meaning they absorb the correspondent fees — so you receive the gross agreed amount. If that is not possible, factor the expected intermediary deduction into the payment amount so the net receipt matches your fee.
If you are working with an overseas client you will transact with more than once, establish the banking relationship before you need it under time pressure. Test the corridor with a small amount early in the professional relationship. The first wire from a new overseas counterparty is the riskiest — a new account, an unknown routing path, a compliance review with no prior transaction history to reference. Get that first payment across at low stakes, confirm the corridor works, and subsequent wires on larger transactions will move more predictably.
The mechanics of receiving money from across a border have not changed as quickly as the deals that require it. SWIFT is a robust and reliable system for institutional settlement — it was never designed to close on Friday when your client is in Singapore and your bank is in Texas. Understanding where the friction lives, how to minimize it through correct instruction, and when to use a different rail entirely is what separates a professional who waits and worries from one who receives with certainty. The deal closes when both parties are ready. The payment should close just as decisively.
