Every operator converts currency. The difference between a good FX setup and a bad one is whether you convert on your terms, in your amounts, at a time you chose, or per payment, at whatever rate happened to apply, with nobody watching.
How FX works in Xace
FX in Xace is account to account: you convert from one of your accounts into another of your accounts in a different currency. No third-party broker, no waiting for funds to come back.
- It is switched on per account by the support team. Ask for it.
- Open FX from the account menu, or start a trade from the Payment Drawer.
- Pick the source and destination accounts, choose buy or sell, enter the amount, and preview the quote.
- The quoted rate is held for five minutes. Confirm within that window or start again.
- Once settled, the funds are in the destination account and available to pay out immediately.
Markets are open during specific hours, listed on the Trading Hours tab. Outside those hours you can prepare a trade but not submit it.
Hold or convert
Decide this once and write it down.
- Hold. Keep balances in the currency they arrive in and pay out from them. No conversion at all when inbound and outbound roughly match.
- Convert on receipt. Everything goes to your base currency as it lands. Simple, but every foreign payout becomes a fresh trade.
- Threshold. Keep a target balance per currency. Convert the surplus above a ceiling, top up below a floor. This is where most multi-market operators end up.
Xace supports automated, manual and threshold-based conversion. The threshold approach turns FX into a treasury task done a few times a week from the hub account, instead of something that happens invisibly inside payments.
Put approvals on trades
FX Trades is one of the actions you can put behind an approval policy. A sensible baseline:
- Below a modest amount: no approval, so treasury can rebalance freely.
- Above it: one approver.
- Above a high threshold: two approvers, in order.
Every trade is logged with rate, amount, accounts and user, so the audit trail is already there.
A weekly FX routine
- Look at group balances by currency against the next week's expected payouts.
- Convert surpluses down to the ceiling and top up shortfalls to the floor, from the hub.
- Do it during trading hours, mid-morning, when you can act on the quote calmly.
- Once a quarter, compare what you paid in spread against what you would have paid converting per payment. That number is the case for the routine.
