“Why did my supplier receive less than I sent?” is quite a common question you may find on the entrepreneur forums. Finding the right supplier abroad can already be tough, and you really don’t want any more problems associated with the process.
Very common setup: a semiconductor manufacturer in Taiwan, a component maker in the USA, and your factory in the EU. Asia-America-Europe, multiple currencies, and regular shipments literally around the world.
You will be paying them invoice after invoice – supply, shipment, currency conversion – and it’s your responsibility to pay on time, in full.
Cross-border B2B transactions are no different from regular payments – you can overpay in fees using SWIFT and lose a shipment because you didn’t pay in full, or the transaction can get lost because the corresponding bank has not decided to proceed in time.
Usually, a shipment will be just delayed because your factory didn’t get paid in full, but a supplier could raise prices specifically for you because they don’t like absorbing FX or time losses, or they could switch to another partner.
This is one of the many challenges, especially for a new entrepreneur, and SWIFT business transfers are something you need to look into – to know all the intricacies of such operations.
The financial speed bumps of international supplier payments
There are certainly cases when businesses don’t choose their payment infrastructure with the intention of managing international supply chains in mind. They just opened a business account at a financial institution that was reliable or convenient when they got started, and years later, they’re routing six-to seven-figure supplier invoices through a system that was never built for global B2B payments.
Three common problems can arise for these companies when it comes to international supplier payments.
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Hidden FX markups and mystery intermediary fees
Financial institutions do not always share their exchange rate margins in full. In some cases, you can expect to face the final exchange rate that is 1% to 5% worse than the mid-market currency rate, depending on the provider, currency pair, and transfer size.
It may not be a big deal at first glance, but for a bank, this is millions of dollars every day. That’s why your $50K invoice payment could lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars in FX markups and fees, even if you paid the visible transfer charges.
Most of the problems can occur during SWIFT business transfers – specifically due to intermediary bank fees. SWIFT is a secure financial messaging network, not the institution that moves, holds, clears, or settles the funds itself. The actual payment is processed through banks and other financial institutions.
SWIFT is a great, unique tool, but not perfect, and you should know about it beforehand. Because one day your supplier may receive less than the invoice said, and you’re the one who has to explain why.
Costly delays that damage supplier trust
In many global manufacturing relationships, including supplier partnerships in China, production may begin only after payment is confirmed.
A common situation businesses face is sending a SWIFT payment and receiving a simple response from the supplier: “Payment not received.”
The sender checks the SWIFT confirmation, sees that the payment instruction was submitted correctly, and shares the receipt with the supplier. The supplier still replies: “The funds have not arrived.”
So where is the money? In many cases, the payment is not lost. It may be delayed somewhere along the correspondent banking chain, held for compliance checks, affected by bank cut-off times, or waiting for additional processing by an intermediary or receiving bank. This can take several business days, and in more complex cases, even longer.
In global manufacturing and logistics, timing is not a nice-to-have. A delayed payment can postpone production, disrupt shipping schedules, and create unnecessary tension with suppliers.
Bad timing in cross-border B2B transactions does not just cost you money. It can damage supplier trust, delay operations, and put future business relationships at risk.
Compliance checks and growing cross-border fraud
Unfortunately, high-value cross-border payments can be used in many money-laundering schemes disguised as “international trade.” That is why banks and financial institutions apply risk-based AML, sanctions, and fraud checks to international business transfers.
If you send a large sum internationally through a traditional bank, there’s a real chance it can get flagged for manual review, sometimes for days.
Banks are right to be cautious about cross-border fraud, but not every compliance process is built around the speed businesses need for time-sensitive supplier payments.
To update all hardware and software just to accommodate international supplier payments will cost too much for old banks – they will eventually change, but not all of them. The result is a frustrating cycle of phone calls, paperwork, and “we just need to verify a few more details” emails, right when you need the payment to move.
Traditional wires vs. modern cross-border workflows
The difference between legacy bank transfers and a platform built specifically for cross-border B2B transactions isn’t subtle once you put them side by side.
Feature | Transfers via traditional banks | Modern B2B payment systems |
Global reach | Limited to fixed partner-bank corridors | Direct access to multiple countries and territories (160+ in Genome’s case) |
Currency management | Manual conversion on every invoice | Native multi-currency business account to hold and pay in local currencies |
Cost | Fees unpredictable, no route optimization | Automated smart routing that finds the cheapest path |
Transparency | Black-box tracking: you find out it arrived when the supplier calls | Real-time status dashboards, accessible from an app |
Even in a failed payment scenario, the difference between finding out immediately and, sometimes, days later, is dramatic.
How to safely scale and manage international supply chains
Once you’ve seen where the friction comes from, the fixes are straightforward. The challenge is putting them in place before a bad quarter forces the issue, especially when you’re managing international supply chains across multiple time zones at once.
Eliminate conversion friction with multi-currency infrastructure
Currency volatility has been and will remain a major problem for cross-border payments.
If you’re converting payments into your home currency and then converting them again for supplier invoices, you may be paying for unnecessary FX twice, with each conversion potentially including a visible fee, an exchange rate spread, or both. A multi-currency business account lets you hold EUR, USD, GBP, and other major currencies and pay suppliers directly in that currency.
You can receive the funds in any currency and convert them on your own terms. This is major, as you don’t have to guess what the rate will be by the time the payment clears, and you have a much easier time forecasting costs when you manage international supply chains spanning several regions.
Centralize your corporate cash management
This is not a new trend, but many companies still operate with fragmented financial setups: one account for EUR suppliers, another for USD payments, and a third for transfers routed through Asia. This can make it difficult to get a clear, real-time view of your company’s cash position.
It may be manageable for a smaller business, but high-value international transfers are common in global B2B operations. Cross-border payments may also involve tax, reporting, invoicing, and accounting considerations, depending on the transaction type and jurisdiction.
Centralizing transfers into a single dashboard, where you can track pending and completed payments, makes cash management more transparent and easier to control.
For high-value cross-border payments, limited visibility over payment status, timing, and received amounts can create serious operational risks. Businesses need to know when funds are expected to arrive, especially when supplier payments, subsidiary funding, or time-sensitive contracts are involved.
This is exactly the gap Genome can close. We recently updated the SWIFT business transfers network to cover 161 countries and territories – including major hubs like the US, Canada, Japan, UAE, Australia, South Korea, and Switzerland – with support across 12 major currencies (EUR, USD, GBP, PLN, CHF, JPY, CAD, CZK, HUF, SEK, AUD, and DKK).
For a business settling high-value cross-border payments to suppliers or funding subsidiaries in different markets, our new feature lets you pay directly from a single business wallet instead of opening new local accounts at every bank.
Maximizing security and efficiency in global B2B payments
Reach and currency coverage only matter if the payment infrastructure behind them is reliable, secure, and efficient. For high-value cross-border payments, two factors make a real difference: smart routing and strong regulatory oversight.
The power of intelligent routing systems
Instead of sending every payment through the same fixed corridor regardless of cost or speed, a modern payment platform can assess key transaction details and select the most suitable route based on the destination, currency, beneficiary bank, available payment rails, fees, and expected delivery time.
This is what separates a more efficient international transfer from a payment that simply moves through the standard correspondent banking chain, where timing and fees may be harder to predict.
At Genome, outgoing international transfers are optimized through an Intelligent Routing System, which automatically selects the most efficient and cost-effective route available for each payment.
Depending on the destination, currency, and beneficiary details, that route may involve SWIFT for broad global coverage, or an available local rail such as Faster Payments, CHAPS, or TARGET2/T2 to reduce costs and improve execution time. For SWIFT payments, the standard delivery timeframe is usually 1 to 4 business days, while local rails may be faster where available.
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Mitigating risk with regulatory compliance
Speed matters, but it should never come at the expense of proper oversight. A reliable payment partner needs strong compliance controls, secure infrastructure, and clear regulatory accountability.
Genome is secure and operates as a licensed Electronic Money Institution supervised by the Bank of Lithuania, with compliance built around frameworks such as PSD2, GDPR, PCI DSS, and DORA. This gives businesses a regulated environment for managing international transfers, customer data, operational security, and payment-related risks.
European financial regulation is strict, especially for institutions handling business payments across borders. Working with a regulated provider helps reduce exposure to fraud, compliance gaps, and operational uncertainty in cross-border B2B transactions.
For businesses, this means fewer manual workarounds, stronger payment controls, and a payment infrastructure designed to support scrutiny from the start.
Build a borderless supply chain with Genome
Safely scaling international supplier payments doesn’t require an unlimited budget or a compliance department the size of your engineering team. It requires the right infrastructure: get a multi-currency business account and a provider with intelligent routing, and you are good for global B2B payments.
Genome brings all of that together on one platform for handling cross-border B2B transactions – a 161-country SWIFT business transfers network, multi-currency business accounts, and real-time tracking on every transfer. Check if your business is eligible and open a business account inside Genome online.
