Invoicing a Client in Crypto for the First Time

A client abroad offered to pay in crypto instead of a bank transfer that would have taken four days and cost fifty euros. I said yes and then made three mistakes on the invoice. I worked this out by comparing against a regulated crypto to fiat gateway, which publishes the numbers I was guessing at.

Mistake one: I priced in crypto

I invoiced a fixed amount of the asset rather than a euro amount with a crypto equivalent.

The price moved four percent before they paid. One of us was worse off and neither of us had agreed to that.

Now I price in euros and state the crypto amount as the equivalent at a stated rate and time, with a deadline after which it is recalculated.

Mistake two: I did not say who pays the network fee

They sent the invoice amount and their wallet deducted the fee from it, so I received slightly less.

Not deliberate. Their wallet defaults to that behaviour, and plenty do.

The line that fixed it: please send exactly the amount shown, network fees are payable by the sender.

Mistake three: I named the asset and not the network

The stablecoin I asked for exists on several networks. They sent on one my platform does not credit.

It took nine days and a support ticket to recover, with a fee. It could have been unrecoverable.

Now the invoice names the network in full, plus a line saying funds sent on any other network cannot be recovered. It reads as stating the obvious and it has prevented a repeat. Funds face the same question with more paperwork, which is where a provider serving law firms and corporate services fits.

What the invoice says now

The amount in euros. The crypto amount and the rate used. The network, written out. The address. A deadline. The sender-pays-fees line. The wrong-network line.

Seven items, and each one prevents something specific that happened to me.

What it actually costs

If you want to see all of this in a real product rather than in my account of it, a support channel with a named contact publishes the terms.

About a dollar in network fees, plus a conversion margin of a fraction of a percent when I convert to euros.

The bank transfer it replaced cost fifty euros in fees plus a currency margin, and took four days.

For invoicing internationally, it is not close.

The one thing I set up first

The conversion route: which provider, which bank account, tested with a small amount before the first real invoice.

I convert on receipt rather than holding, because holding is a position I did not decide to take.