Cheapest Way to Convert CAD to USD for a Business

The cheapest way for a Canadian business to convert CAD to USD is to stop paying the bank's built-in markup. That markup is usually around 2.5% of the amount, while business FX accounts and brokers typically charge 0.25% to 0.5%. On a C$35,000 supplier payment, the difference is roughly C$700 on one transfer. If you already earn USD, the cheapest conversion is the one you skip by holding it.

That C$35,000 comes from a real post. An Ontario owner in r/SmallBusinessCanada wrote that RBC was charging "a 2.5% FX fee on the CAD to USD conversion. Plus international wire fee," with a US supplier payment due in three days. Their question is the one this post answers: what is actually cheaper, and what is safe when there is a deadline.

FX is one of the quieter lines when you work out where your business is losing money, because it never shows as a fee. It is built into the rate.

Where the money goes when you convert CAD to USD

Almost all of the cost is the gap between the rate you get and the market rate, not the transfer fee. The fee is visible, but the spread is bigger.

Every conversion has two parts:

1. The spread (markup): how far your rate sits from the mid-market rate. Banks build it into the rate they quote.
2. The fixed fee: a wire or transfer charge in dollars.

RBC's own business fees and charges guide says it may convert payments "at the applicable currency conversion rate established by Royal Bank." In other words, the rate is theirs to set, and they do not print the percentage. The same PDF does print one: its cross-border debit conversion is "2.5% over the Interbank Spot Rate."

What the big banks charge for business conversions has to be estimated. KnightsbridgeFX's comparison, updated September 2026 and based on what it calls publicly available information, estimates these markups on a US$10,000 exchange:

Keep in mind that KnightsbridgeFX sells FX, so treat these as a competitor's estimate. They do line up with the 2.5% the owner was quoted. At 2.5%, C$35,000 costs C$875 before the wire fee. At 2.6% it is C$910.

How to check what your bank is really charging

Divide the rate you got by the Bank of Canada rate for that day, then subtract 1. The result is your markup.

1. Find the conversion on your statement or trade confirmation. Work out the CAD per USD you paid: CAD debited divided by USD delivered.
2. Look up the Bank of Canada daily rate for that date. On 2026-09-28 it was 1 USD = 1.4168 CAD.
3. Markup = (your rate / Bank of Canada rate) minus 1.

Worked example: you paid C$1.4522 per US dollar on 2026-09-28. 1.4522 / 1.4168 = 1.025, so you paid a 2.5% markup.

One caveat: the Bank of Canada says its rates are "indicative rates only," built from averages of quotes from financial institutions and published once a day by 16:30 ET. Rates move during the day, so treat a gap of a few tenths of a percent as noise. You are only trying to tell whether you are paying around 0.5% or around 2.5%, and this test does that.

This is the same exercise as finding the effective rate on a merchant statement: ignore the headline number, divide what you lost by what you moved, and compare the result to a benchmark.

Published rates side by side on C$35,000

On a C$35,000 conversion, published business FX pricing works out to roughly C$88 to C$170, against about C$875 at a 2.5% bank markup. Each figure below comes from the provider's own pricing page or quote engine, checked on 2026-09-28.

The details that matter:

• Wise quoted C$169.83 on C$35,000 through its own pricing engine: a 0.48% variable fee plus C$2.64, or 0.46% if the money is already in your Wise balance. The Wise Business pricing page says "we don't inflate the mid-market exchange rate," lists a one-time 55 CAD setup fee, and offers a volume discount once you convert more than 35,000 CAD. Paying out by SWIFT instead of a US bank transfer added about C$9 in fixed fees on the same quote.
• Venn lists its FX rate per plan on its pricing page: 0.45% on Essentials, 0.35% on Plus, 0.25% on Pro. Essentials charges $2 per local transfer (EFT or ACH) and $10 per international wire.
• Loop lists 0.47% on Basic, 0.27% on Plus and 0.12% on Power on its pricing page. Card purchases in USD, GBP, EUR or CAD carry 0% FX because the card spends in that currency.
• KnightsbridgeFX does not post rates, because "the rates change based on the amount you exchange." You book a quote by phone, chat or its app. Its minimum is $2,000, it lists free wires, and it is registered with FINTRAC as a money services business.
• Interactive Brokers charges a commission of 0.20 basis points of trade value, minimum USD 2.00, on spot currency conversions. That only helps if the corporation already runs a brokerage account there.

The cheapest route on a spreadsheet is not always the right one for Monday. Some of these providers have minimums, onboarding checks and funding steps that a bank does not. That is the next section.

Which route fits your situation

Match the route to the payment, not to a single "best" provider. An urgent one-off payment and recurring monthly payables need different routes.

A one-off payment due this week

If the money must land in three days and no FX account is set up yet, the bank is often the least risky choice. Before you convert, ask for a quoted rate on the exact amount. RBC's own schedule says US payments involving currency conversion must go by the 16:30 ET cut-off and be sent two business days before the expected delivery date. Count business days, because, as one commenter put it, "nothing gets transferred over the weekend."

Then open an FX account for next time, because the savings come from the next payment, not this one.

Recurring supplier or software payments

For regular USD payables from a few thousand to tens of thousands a month, a business FX account that pays out by ACH is the usual answer. In the r/SmallBusinessCanada thread, one owner said they send "roughly $30k per month (single payment)" through Wise and it "arrives usually by the next day." Another, pairing Wise with RBC, reported "at least saving 150bps."

Pay by ACH when the supplier accepts it. The cost difference between ACH and wire is a topic of its own, but on a recurring payment the fixed fee adds up.

A large lump sum

For C$50,000 and up, get two quotes on the same amount and compare the USD delivered. Ask your bank's commercial desk, and ask an FX broker. In a Quebec owner's thread, one commenter reported that RBC's commercial forex division had a "Minimum trade is $50,000" and charged "24-30ish basis points per $100K in my trades." That is one owner's experience, but it shows the posted rate is a starting point.

You earn USD and spend USD

Do not convert at all. Keep the USD in a USD account and pay USD costs from it. This is the biggest saving on the list and has its own section below.

Norbert's Gambit for a corporation

Norbert's Gambit can beat every provider above on a large, planned conversion, but it takes days and needs a brokerage account. You buy a dual-listed security with CAD, move it to the USD side of the account, and sell it for USD.

The usual vehicle is the Global X US Dollar Currency ETF (DLR in CAD, DLR.U in USD). Global X's own walkthrough sets the conditions:

• Both CAD and USD accounts with the same broker, and "the same type of account (i.e. cash or margin) and in the same registered name." For a business, that means a corporate account in the corporation's name, not the owner's personal one.
• Look for a bid-ask spread of "generally, two cents" and use limit orders.
• The journal is "typically no cost," but "some dealers may require three or more days for this step to settle."

Broker fees vary. Questrade's journaling page says a journal "normally costs $9.95/request" unless you have Questrade Plus, and that "Journal requests may take up to 5 business days to process." One r/SmallBusinessCanada commenter said RBC Direct Investing journals for free, but "you do have to phone them each time."

The direction matters. In a walkthrough of the process, Canadian finance YouTuber Jacky Kuk points out that going CAD to USD, your rate is effectively locked when you buy, while going USD to CAD leaves you exposed to the rate for the days the journal takes. That makes Norbert's a better fit for buying USD than for selling it.

When it is not worth it: small amounts (commissions eat the savings), payments due in less than a week, or a corporation with no brokerage account and no plans to open one.

The double conversion most businesses miss

If USD comes in and USD goes out, every trip through CAD pays the markup twice. It is the most common FX leak and the easiest to fix.

A BC owner described it exactly in a thread about USD credit cards: "I'm currently paying these recurring services on a CAD credit card (and paying for the currency conversion). I then have to convert my USD to CAD (paying for conversion again) to pay the credit card bill."

The fixes:

• Keep a USD account and let USD revenue stay in USD.
• Pay USD costs in USD. RBC's Commercial U.S. Dollar Visa is pitched at "avoiding foreign exchange conversion fees," with a $60 USD annual fee. Fintech cards such as Loop spend directly in USD at 0% FX. The trade-offs of the card itself are covered in whether to get a business credit card.
• Watch debit and prepaid cards. RBC's fee guide says cross-border debit purchases convert at 2.5% over the interbank spot rate.
• Convert only the net. Convert just what you need in CAD, in one planned transfer, instead of each invoice as it lands.

This connects to cash flow management more than to FX. Deciding which currency to hold is a treasury decision, and small businesses usually leave it to whichever account the money happens to land in.

The risk nobody prices: holds and onboarding

The cheapest provider is worthless if your money is frozen on the day the supplier needs it. Price is only one part of the decision.

In the same C$35,000 thread, one owner wrote that a fintech "off boarded us the next day after a supplier submitted USD payment - it's been 6 weeks and they still haven't returned the funds." That is one account of one provider, but the pattern is familiar from payments: new accounts, sudden large amounts and first transfers draw reviews. It is the same dynamic behind a processor holding funds.

Protect yourself:

• Open the account before you need it. KnightsbridgeFX, for example, says verification is "usually less than 1 business day," and other providers vary.
• Run a small test end to end, from your bank to the provider to the supplier's bank, before a payment that matters.
• Keep the bank route ready as a fallback for the first large payment.
• Do not hold more with a new provider than you need for the next cycle of payments.

Checklist and yearly break-even table

Use this five-step check on your own account, then use the table to decide whether switching is worth your time.

1. List every USD outflow in the last 12 months: suppliers, software, ads, contractors.
2. Run the markup formula on three recent conversions.
3. Mark any flow where USD comes in and goes back out through CAD.
4. Ask your bank for a quoted rate on your typical amount, and get one quote from an FX provider on the same amount.
5. Compare the USD delivered, not the fee line.

What the markup costs per year, by USD spend converted from CAD (spread only, fixed fees excluded):

If a supplier raised prices on you in USD and the exchange rate made it worse, a saving of 2 points on the conversion is often worth more than chasing a discount. When you pass those costs on, the guide to raising prices without losing customers covers how. For card processing fees, the cheapest route depends on the provider in the same way; the fees comparison lays out what processors publish.

Can you do this yourself?

Yes, and most owners should. Opening an FX account, running a test transfer and asking your bank for a quote is an afternoon's work, and the table above shows the payoff.

It stops being worth your time when the leak is spread across many flows: USD revenue through Stripe or PayPal, USD software on three different cards, suppliers paid by wire from a CAD account, and a bookkeeper converting as needed. At that point the job is mapping every flow, not choosing a provider. Some of it can be scheduled, the same way you would automate recurring payments, once you know which account each payment should come from.

Watch the other side of cross-border payments too. When a platform starts passing a percentage fee on to customers, as with QuickBooks' ACH fee, the answer is the same: find out what the fee actually is, then choose the route yourself instead of accepting the default.

The short version: measure your markup, hold USD you already earn, and never convert a large amount at a rate you did not ask to see first.