The Best States for Small Business (2024 Guide)
Discover the best states for small businesses, featuring insights on tax benefits, resources, and thriving markets to help your venture succeed.
Payroll services can be beneficial for businesses of all sizes, saving time, money and headaches. Crucially, having a professional manage payroll can improve accuracy and reduce the risk of mistakes being made.
But some full-service payroll solutions aren’t necessarily a good fit for small and medium enterprises. They may require a minimum monthly payroll volume, or cost too much for companies that only need basic services.
The good news for SMEs is that there are a host of other providers available. These alternative payroll partners can help you cut payroll costs by providing handy services such as easy batch payments, integration with accounting software and even multi-currency payments. Let’s take a look at a few of the best.
Wise Batch Payment tool makes it simple and quick to send up to 1,000 payments at a single click. This saves you an enormous amount of time on payroll, especially compared to setting up individual payments. You can even pay employees, contractors and freelancers all over the world with your multi-currency business account.
Want to automate your payroll payouts? Get in touch with the team directly
Wise has no monthly fee, and guarantees the real exchange rate on every transaction. There’s a low, fair fee for sending international payments which varies according to the currency that’s being converted which ranges from 0.35%-3%.
With Wise Business you also can set Auto Conversions. Choose your currencies, the amount to convert, and your desired exchange rate. Wise will then automatically exchange the amount when your desired rate is available. This is a great, easy, and safe way to save money if you need to pay employees or suppliers abroad. |
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Payouts, the newer version of PayPal’s Mass Payment tool, allows you to easily send money to a group or as many as 5,000 people at once. Once you have a PayPal Business account, you can set up bulk payments by uploading a spreadsheet or using the API.¹
Services
PayPal Payouts promises straightforward pricing, with domestic payments costing 2% per payment (capped at 1 USD per payment).¹ It’s much cheaper ($0.25 USD per U.S. transaction) if you use the API. However, if you want to send internationally, fees vary per country and there are additional costs such as exchange rate mark-up which is around 3.75%³ on top of the transfer fee (2%).²
Payoneer is an online transfer service that’s particularly useful for receiving and sending money internationally. Register for a company account (if you have over 5 employees) and you can send multiple transfers.
A great feature of Payoneer is that it’s free to send to another Payoneer users when using your balance. If you’re making international payments to non-users or use another funding source like their local bank accounts, fees range from 1-3% and bank processing fees, landing fees, or intermediary fees may be deducted by their bank or any other payment provider that are not directly associated with Payoneer. There are also currency conversion fees to consider, although Payoneer does base it's conversion rates on the mid-market rate – so that’s a plus.⁵
OFX’s Multipay tool lets you pay up to 500 recipients at once, in their preferred currencies. Once you’re signed up, you’ll need to upload your payroll document with payment details and the system will automatically generate currency conversion rates for each payment. Approve it, and the payments are sent.
Services
OFX isn’t as competitive as other transfer services when it comes to the exchange rate – it doesn’t give you the mid-market exchange rate (the ‘real’ rate with no mark-up added on top) but it does promise a smaller margin than many banks.⁷ There are no transaction fees, but a clear pricing structure is also a little harder compared to other providers. OFX may charge a flat fee of up to $15 for transfers up to $10,000 in Australia and Canada.⁷ Transfers from the United Kingdom and the United States do not incur a fee. The exchange rates provided by OFX are much more competitive than traditional banks, averaging between 1.72% of the total amount transferred for small values ($1,000), and 0.70% for larger values ($100,000).⁷
Money transfer service Skrill doesn’t have a huge uptake in the U.S. and it’s really best for online retailers, but it still has uses for smaller businesses wanting to pay employees and contractors based overseas. You can use its mass ]payment service to send payments to as many as 3,000 people in a single procedure, but it isn’t perhaps as streamlined as other providers.
Skrill gives you the mid-market rate and promises no hidden fees, plus it’s free to send straight to a bank account. If you’re not sending to a bank account, fees of 1.45% per transaction will apply and you’ll also need to watch out for currency conversion fees of 3.99%. Fees are set to change in January 2020.⁸
Tipalti specializes in automating global mass payments which includes payroll.
Tipalti offers three scaled pricing levels, ranging from $299 a month to $1599 for more advanced functionality.⁹ There are also per-transaction and foreign exchange charges depending on the payment method.¹⁰
Learn More: Tipalti Competitors and Alternatives 2023
HyperWallet’s Payout Solutions provides a scalable platform for making mass payments. A PayPal service, it promises a full-featured, user-friendly portal to give you full control of payments, and there’s also plenty of support and training to help you find the configuration that works for you.
HyperWallet doesn’t make its pricing information publicly available, so you’ll need to get in touch to discuss a payment solution that suits your needs in order to find out the cost.
RegalPay is a payments automation software adapter which allows you to make payments – including bulk payments and payroll – directly from your current accounting or ERP (enterprise resource planning) software. This means you can do it all from your desktop, without needing to open a separate website, portal or application.
RegalPay doesn’t make its pricing information publicly available, although it is likely that you’ll need to sign up for monthly/annual subscription. The costs for international transfers could be expensive unless you have the right package, so it’s probably best used for payroll within the U.S.
It couldn’t be more straightforward to manage payroll with the Wise batch payments. Here’s how to get started:
Set up your Wise Business Account
Download a batch payment template file (recommended to open in Microsoft Excel)
Fill in your recipients’ transfer details, including names, amounts and currencies
Save the file as a .csv
Upload the file on the batch payments page
Review the transfers, checking that all is ok and you’re happy with the fees
Hit ‘send’ and pay for the batch
Head back to your account page to track the transfers in real-time, so you can see exactly when each payment is made.
While the steps above are relatively simple, there’s a way you can save even more admin time – particularly if you have a lot of employees on the payroll. You can automate the process using the Wise open API.
This is an Application Programming Interface, giving companies an easy, secure way to access their account, managing everything in one place.
Wise opened its API to help businesses streamline their workflows. By using it, not only can you automate payments — you can also connect your business tools to Wise, and create other intelligent, intuitive ways to manage your finances.
There are no extra charges or premium subscriptions. And it only takes a few minutes to get your tokens. Take a look at the Payouts Guide to get started.
With one of the tools above, you no longer need to dread running payroll each month – nor do you need to shell out for expensive payroll solutions.
Mass payment services can be a great alternative for small and medium-sized businesses, but you need to find a solution that works for you. This could be a simple, low-cost bulk payments tool or a powerful API platform where you can automate and tailor the service to suit you.
Sources used:
Sources checked on 2nd-December 2019.
*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.
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