Is a multi-currency business account worth it?

Check last month's invoices against what landed in the account, and the numbers probably won't quite match.

It's easy enough to write off as background noise.

A conversion here, a transfer fee there, nothing dramatic enough on its own to chase up, so it just gets absorbed into the cost of working with clients abroad.

Last year, UK businesses exported more than £900 billion in goods and services.

Plenty of that was paid in euros and other currencies, so it's no surprise more owners are looking for a multi currency business account UK companies can open online.

When an account only holds pounds, any euros sent to it get converted as soon as they arrive, at whatever rate applies that day. You'll see the rate once the money lands, but by then it's already in pounds.

What you can't see is what you'd have ended up with if you'd been able to keep the money in the currency it arrived in.

You earned that money, so you should get to pick when it turns into pounds.

A multi-currency account puts that choice back in your hands. With Ampere, you get a GBP account with a sort code and IBAN, plus a EUR account with its own IBAN. Euros that come in stay in euros until you decide to convert them. You still convert eventually, just on your timing.

Getting paid in euros is simple. Put your EUR IBAN on your invoices, and clients in Europe can pay you by SEPA, the same way they'd pay a local supplier. You can open a GBP and EUR account and start invoicing from the same place.

If a client pays you in euros and your supplier wants euros too, a pounds-only account turns the payment into pounds when it lands, then back into euros when you pay the supplier, and you lose a bit on the rate both times.

With a euro balance, the money comes in as euros and goes out as euros, and the exchange rate never gets a look in.

You could keep letting the rate decide for you and call it the cost of doing business abroad.

Or you could hold onto what you're paid, in the currency you were paid in, and convert it whenever the timing suits you, the same afternoon, or three invoices from now.

Leave the chart-watching to the currency traders.

Ampere shows you the exchange rate before you confirm anything, so the number on screen is the number that gets charged:

• GBP and EUR: 0.35% over the ECB reference rate
• USD and CHF: 0.55% over the ECB reference rate
• SEPA transfers: free
• SWIFT transfers: £25

With euros already in your account, you pay EU suppliers by SEPA for free and skip the conversion fee altogether. When you do want pounds, you can convert part of your balance and leave the rest in euros for later. Maybe you swap enough to cover this month's salaries and keep the rest for next quarter's supplier bills.

Keep your payments in euros and the amount you invoiced is the amount you have, so you can see exactly what's waiting before you decide what to do with it.