If you’re paying international suppliers via standard bank wire (SWIFT transfer), you’re likely paying more and waiting longer than you need to.
Each transfer you make passes through a chain of banks before it reaches your supplier. And each bank can take a cut, whether that’s a flat fee, a share of the Foreign Exchange (FX) margin, or both — but they don’t always disclose this upfront.
For a UAE business paying overseas suppliers regularly, these costs add up. A handful of transfers a month in bank fees and FX margin can become tens of thousands of dirhams a year. That’s money lost to the payment method itself, not the cost of doing business internationally.
Here’s what paying international suppliers in the UAE costs — and what UAE businesses are doing instead.
Before reaching its final destination (your supplier’s bank), a SWIFT transfer passes through your UAE bank, then one or more correspondent banks. Each stop in that chain adds time and, often, an additional fee that doesn’t show up until the payment has already gone out.
The typical timeline for the transfer to complete is 3-5 business days. Typical costs run AED 50-150 per transfer in bank fees, plus an FX conversion margin on non-AED amounts.
Consider a business making USD 20,000 in international supplier payments each month, across 10 separate transfers:
The AED’s exchange rate to the USD is fixed at 3.6725 and is set by the UAE government. It doesn’t change with the market, so AED-to-USD transfers carry no FX risk.
AED-to-EUR, GBP, SAR or other currency transfers carry FX exposure, and that’s where businesses lose the most money. Paying a supplier in USD costs a UAE business nothing extra on currency conversion. Pay the same supplier in EUR or GBP and the bank adds a markup to the exchange rate on every transfer.
A few options exist beyond the standard bank wire:
Mamo beta-launched international payouts in May 2026 using crypto-based settlement rails. In an internal test transfer, a payment sent from the UAE to the UK arrived in 33 seconds. Payouts typically process within minutes, across 13 corridors including the UK and most of the EU.
Join the waitlist for international payouts.
4 practical steps can reduce what a business loses to fees and FX margin, any way you send money:
Mamo supports bulk transfers, so batching payments doesn’t mean manually sending 10 separate transfers. Multiple supplier payments can go out in a single batch instead.
Mamo Partner cards let you issue a virtual card directly to an external supplier, who can spend from it immediately. There’s no bank transfer required and no FX margin on your side.
Domestic UAE payouts cost AED 5 per transfer on Mamo’s Growth and Premium plans.
International payouts cost:
Compare that to a bank’s SWIFT fee of AED 50-150 plus an FX margin. At a low volume the difference is noticeable. At a higher volume, though, it increases significantly because every transfer carries the same fixed bank fee regardless of size.
Not every provider makes its real cost easy to see. Look for:
Mamo’s Payouts API covers this last point directly by allowing businesses to trigger and schedule international payouts automatically instead of initiating each one manually from a dashboard.
Standard bank wires (SWIFT transfers) are slow, expensive and often unclear about what you’re actually paying. They typically take 3-5 business days, incur AED 50-150 in fees and carry an FX margin that varies by bank.
Batching payments, negotiating terms and invoicing in AED can reduce some of that cost, but the real fix is a provider built for international payouts from the start. Mamo offers transparent pricing, fast settlement times and no hidden FX margin.
A SWIFT transfer that takes multiple business days and carries an undisclosed FX margin is an expensive default when there’s the option for a payment to settle in minutes, with pricing you can see upfront.
