A payment processor takes player deposits and sends you the money. That is the easy half. The harder half is everything else: settlements landing in a currency you did not want, payouts to affiliates on three continents, supplier invoices in USD, and fees you cannot explain at month end.
This guide is about the money that moves between your PSPs, your accounts and the people you pay.
How settlement actually arrives
Your PSP collects deposits in many currencies and settles to you on a schedule, typically daily or weekly, usually in one or two settlement currencies. The settlement arrives as a SEPA payment if it is EUR, Faster Payments if GBP, or SWIFT for anything else.
Three things to agree with each PSP up front:
- Settlement currency. Ask for EUR and GBP settlement into your EUR and GBP accounts. Every currency the PSP converts for you is a spread you did not choose.
- Settlement account. Give each PSP its own IBAN if you can. Separate IBANs reconcile themselves.
- Reference format. A settlement reference that includes the period and the merchant ID saves hours of matching.
How cross-border payouts move
Inside SEPA, a EUR payment goes bank to bank on one rail. Simple.
Outside SEPA, SWIFT payments travel through correspondent banks. Your bank sends to a correspondent, which sends to the beneficiary's bank, sometimes via another correspondent. Each hop can take a day and take a fee. This is why a SWIFT payment takes one to five days and why the beneficiary sometimes receives less than you sent.
You cannot remove the hops, but you can shorten them. Correct BIC and intermediary bank details route the payment directly. Missing ones send it on a tour.
Where the fees hide
- FX spread when a PSP or bank converts on your behalf.
- Correspondent fees deducted along a SWIFT route, often invisible until the beneficiary complains.
- Receiving fees at the beneficiary's bank for incoming international payments.
- Re-conversion when a payout in currency X is funded from a balance in currency Y.
Most of these disappear if you hold balances in the currencies you pay out in and settle locally wherever a local rail exists.
The account setup that keeps it clean
- One operating account per currency you settle or pay out in, each with its own IBAN. Xace covers 28+ currencies across the UK and Europe.
- A dedicated IBAN per PSP for inbound settlement.
- Pay affiliates and suppliers in Europe over SEPA from the EUR account. Pay the UK over Faster Payments from the GBP account. Use SWIFT only for what genuinely needs it.
- Collect full international details from every non-SEPA payee at onboarding: IBAN or account number, BIC, intermediary bank name and BIC, and ABA for USD.
- Convert on your own schedule, from a treasury hub, using account-to-account FX with approval on larger trades.
A note on player payouts
Withdrawals are cross-border payments too, and they are the ones players notice. SEPA Instant for euro players and Faster Payments for UK players put the money in their account in seconds. The delay players complain about is almost never the rail; it is the time the request spent in your own queue.
