For those of us who sell on Amazon, the initial set up can be quite daunting. One important question to answer is how are you going to receive the money you make on Amazon.
Amazon.com offers all its sellers the ability to receive funds in their own currency in their own local bank account. So first up, that will get you started.
But that’s not the smartest way, in my humble opinion. You are much better off trying to keep your US Dollars (USD) in USD and not letting Amazon.com convert the dollars into your local currency.
When they transfer your earnings (usually each two weeks) they convert the USD you have earned into your local currency and then deposit into your local bank account.
You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that Amazon will be making on the currency exchange, not you!
There are a number of options for keeping your earnings in USD if you earn them on Amazon.com.
Set up an account with World First or Payoneer. I will only mention WF from here on as that’s the one I know well.
The first thing to do is to call WF (www.worldfirst.com) and find out what steps you need to take to set up a US currency account with them. It is a very easy process and they hold your hand every step of the way.
You do not need to be a US citizen nor have a US company to set up one of these accounts. Anyone can do it. You are basically becoming a customer of World First by “parking” your money in their USD account until you are ready to move it some place else.
Once your account is set up all you need to do is change the account you want your Amazon earnings transferred to, to be the WF account.
I then have an international bank account which I set up with my local bank in Australia (NAB) which allows me to hold and transact funds in USD. Once my funds build up in my WF account, I transfer them to my local international USD account and then I use that account to purchase anything I need to buy in USD.
In this way, I never have to deal with currency fluctuations associated with my Amazon earnings.
If you are transferring funds from USD in your WF account to another account in USD (same currency transfer) then there is a fee you have to pay to WF. But since you can decide when to transfer the funds, you would build up the funds in the WF account and only transfer funds out when there is a good amount there.
Try to transfer in greater than $10,000 lots so that the fee (of about $100) is a very small percentage.