Contractor payment calculator: what each method costs

It depends on the method, and the channel you pick drives most of the cost. Banks averaged 14.99% to send money across borders in Q3 2025, roughly three times the 4.59% average for digital methods (https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/RPW_main_report_and_annex_Q325.pdf). In practice a bank wire is a flat $35 to $50 but banks bury a 1% to 3% spread in the exchange rate. Wise charges an upfront percentage from about 0.4% to 0.9% at the mid-market rate. PayPal adds a 1.50% international fee plus a 3% to 4% conversion spread. Payoneer runs up to 1% plus up to $4 plus a conversion fee. Use the calculator above to see your monthly total side by side against Omnivoo's flat $49 per contractor per month.

An FX markup is the spread a provider adds on top of the real mid-market exchange rate before converting your dollars. It is the cost most people miss because it is not shown as a fee, it is baked into a worse rate so the contractor simply receives less. The scale is large: Americans lost an estimated $5.8 billion to hidden exchange-rate markups in 2023 alone, costs baked into the rate rather than shown as a fee (https://wise.com/us/blog/hidden-costs-in-international-payments-the-overlooked-junk-fee). On a $5,000 payment a 3% spread is $150 that disappears into the rate. The FX-markup column in the calculator is where that hidden cost shows up.

Each method links to its own cited source: Wise pricing, PayPal merchant fees, Payoneer pricing, and published bank wire and FX-margin schedules. Figures are 2026 estimates drawn from those published fee schedules. Actual fees vary by route, funding method, currency, and transfer size, so the calculator shows a low-to-high range, not a quote.

Omnivoo is a flat $49 per contractor per month. Transaction fees are passed through at cost and there is competitive FX built in. The platform fee does not grow with how large the payment is or how many times you pay in a month, so the larger and more frequent your payments, the more the percentage-based methods cost relative to the flat fee.

Yes, on every percentage-based method. The transfer fee and the FX markup are both a share of the amount, so a $10,000 payment carries roughly double the percentage and FX cost of a $5,000 payment. A flat bank wire fee does not scale, but its FX spread still does. Omnivoo's $49 per contractor per month does not scale with the payment amount at all.