You need the recipient's full name as it appears on their bank account, their account number and bank code in the local format, and often the bank name and address. A UK high street bank will typically charge £15 to £25 per international transfer plus a margin on the exchange rate. Wise charges a transparent percentage, usually well under 1% on major currency routes, and shows the exact amount the recipient will receive before you confirm. Always send a small test payment first and confirm it arrived before sending the balance.
If you are staying somewhere for a month or more, at some point a property owner is going to ask you to pay them into a local bank account. If you have only ever paid for accommodation by card, the first one of these is more daunting than it needs to be.
This article is about the mechanics of that payment: what details you need, what it costs, what can go wrong, and how to check before you commit real money. It is not about how to find or negotiate a stay. It is about paying for one you have already agreed.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you sign up for Wise using our link we may receive a small referral fee at no cost to you. We use Wise for every international transfer we make.
What you actually need from them
Details vary by country, but the pattern is consistent. Ask for all of it in writing, in one message, so you are not going back and forth:
- The account holder's full name, exactly as their bank has it. Not a nickname, not the guesthouse's trading name if the account is in a person's name.
- The account number, in the local format. Some countries use IBAN, others use a plain account number plus a bank code.
- The bank name, and in some cases the branch or its address.
- SWIFT/BIC code, which some routes need and others do not.
If the payment platform asks for something the owner has not given you, ask them rather than guessing. A transfer sent on a guessed field either bounces back, which costs you time and sometimes a fee, or lands somewhere it should not.
The single most important check. If the bank details you are given change at any point, especially at the last minute or by a different channel from the original conversation, stop and confirm by voice or video with the person you have been dealing with. Intercepted email and messaging accounts are the most common way rental payments go to the wrong person, and an international transfer is very hard to recover once sent.
What a UK bank charges you
Two costs, and most people only notice the first.
The transfer fee. UK high street banks typically charge somewhere in the region of £15 to £25 for an international payment. Some charge more for payments made in branch or by phone.
The exchange rate margin. This is the larger and less visible cost. Banks generally do not use the mid-market rate, the one Google shows you. They apply a margin on top, often several percent, and it is built into the rate rather than shown as a fee. On a month's rent this is usually worth more than the transfer fee.
There can also be intermediary bank charges on some routes, where a correspondent bank in the chain takes a cut and the recipient ends up with less than you sent. This is the one that causes awkward conversations, because the owner tells you they are short and you have no obvious way to see why.
What Wise charges instead
Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate and charges a transparent percentage fee on top, with no fixed sending charge. For common routes like GBP to Thai Baht or GBP to US dollars, the fee is typically in the range of 0.4% to 0.8% depending on the currency pair and how you pay.
The part that matters practically is that you see the exact amount the recipient will receive before you confirm, along with the fee broken out. There is no intermediary charge appearing later, so the number the owner sees is the number you agreed.
For us, this is where Wise has earned its place. Across the direct arrangements we have made while travelling, we have saved around £500 compared with the alternatives, and on one booking alone the saving was over £200 on a month's rent. We have paid deposits into Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian bank accounts this way, and transfers on major currency routes have generally arrived within hours.
Send a test payment first
This is the advice we would give above all the rest, and it costs almost nothing to follow.
Before sending a month's rent or a significant deposit, send a small amount. Twenty pounds is plenty. Then wait for the owner to confirm it landed, and check the name on the receiving account matched what you expected.
A test payment catches three things at once: a wrong or mistyped account detail, a verification request you did not know was coming, and a recipient whose bank rejects payments from your chosen platform. Finding any of those out on the day the rent is due is a much worse experience than finding out a week early.
It also gives you a paper trail. The transfer confirmation is a receipt, which is useful if there is ever a disagreement about what was paid and when.
Expect a verification request on larger amounts
Every regulated financial firm runs anti-money-laundering checks, and a large or unusual transfer can trigger a request for documentation before it goes through. This is normal, not a sign that something is wrong.
What it means in practice is simple: do not leave a large payment until the day it is due. Give yourself a few days of slack. If a check lands and you need to supply a document, you want that to be an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
Currency: send in theirs, not yours
Send the payment in the recipient's local currency rather than in sterling.
If you send sterling to a foreign account, someone at the other end converts it, and that someone is almost always the receiving bank, at a rate you had no say in and cannot see. Converting on your side, at a rate you can check against the mid-market before confirming, keeps the decision with you.
This is the same principle as declining when a card machine offers to charge you in pounds, which we covered in our article on paying for accommodation in pounds.
A short checklist
- Get all the bank details in writing, in one message.
- Confirm the account holder's name matches the person you are dealing with.
- Verify by voice if any detail changes at any point.
- Send a small test payment and wait for confirmation.
- Check the fee and the recipient amount before you confirm the real payment.
- Send in the recipient's local currency.
- Leave a few days of slack for verification checks.
- Keep the confirmation as a receipt.
None of this is complicated. It is just unfamiliar the first time, and the cost of getting it wrong is high enough to be worth a few minutes of care.
For more on international transfers generally, including the other situations where we use them, see our guide to the cheapest way to send money abroad. For the account itself, our Wise card review covers what it is like to live with.
Fees and rates change. Figures here were checked in August 2026 and should be verified before you rely on them.
