Send money to United States

GBP to USD payments for UK businesses buying from, or selling into, the United States.

The US is the UK's single largest non-EU trading partner, and the corridor is dominated by services, software and professional invoicing rather than physical goods alone. UK firms buying cloud infrastructure, SaaS licences and US-based contractors typically receive invoices in USD even when the vendor has a UK sales presence, because billing entities usually sit onshore in the US. On the export side, UK businesses selling into US enterprise or government buyers are frequently asked to invoice in USD to simplify the counterparty's own accounts payable and budgeting.

Banking behaviour differs from European routes in one important respect: the US has no single low-cost instant retail rail equivalent to SEPA, so business-to-business payments routinely move over the wire network (Fedwire) or ACH batch system rather than a real-time scheme, and same-day settlement is the practical ceiling for most commercial payments rather than an assumption. US correspondent banking is also more fragmented by state and by bank charter type than in the Eurozone, so beneficiary bank routing detail matters more, and errors in the ABA routing number are a common cause of returned or delayed payments.

A further distinguishing feature is that the US dollar is the vehicle currency for a large share of global trade invoicing, so a UK business's USD exposure is rarely limited to direct US suppliers or customers — commodity purchases, freight, and some Asian-manufacturing contracts are also frequently priced in dollars even when neither counterparty is American.