How Sherpa eliminated $50 US wire fees with Vault's free local transfers

Company Name: Sherpa

Website: joinsherpa.com

Contact: Nik Ram - Head of Operations

Location: Toronto, Ontario

Employees: 40

Founded: 2015

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About Sherpa: 

Sherpa, headquartered in Toronto, is driven by a mission to redefine the eVisa journey. Their commitment to simplicity and reliability has made them a trusted partner for travellers worldwide. After securing $8.5M in Series A funding and establishing strategic partnerships, Sherpa is at the forefront of enhancing the visa application experience.

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The Problem:

Costly wire fees and difficulty managing US Dollars.

Sending and receiving funds to the United States is a core part of Sherpa’s finances. When Nik spoke to Vault he mentioned “Payments to the US are very common for us and we were incurring bank fees of $40-50 for every payment. I was shocked when I saw we were even being charged for incoming wires”.

Sherpa was also running into limits on the size of payments that could be made online, with the only work around being multiple smaller payments costing them even more. Despite the volume of payments they were making Sherpa was still not getting competitive FX rates.

When Nik spoke to Vault he mentioned “Our use case is pretty common amongst Canadian business owners and I really didn’t get why things were so costly and time consuming”.

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The Solution:

Vault's platform was able to streamline Sherpa’s payments needs in 4 main ways:

1. Local US Dollar accounts: Sherpa was able to get local USD accounts with Vault allowing them to send and receive ACH payments, all for free. This meant they were able to get hours back per week and save hundreds by eliminating the need for costly wire payments
2. Competitive FX rates: When the need to convert does come up, Sherpa doesn’t have to plan around FX movements as they know they’re always getting the best rates
3. Limits that scale: Vault was able to remove a lot of the caps on payment size so Sherpa doesn’t have to split payments anymore due to arbitrary limits of payment size.
4. Fully integrated solution: Vault’s platform was able to easily connect with their accounting software and Nik was able to set up recurring payments to automate some of the Accounts Payable process.

The Impact:

It’s only been a couple months and Sherpa has replaced their full Accounts Payable process with Vault but that’s only the beginning. 

International payments and ACH are just one part of Vault’s all-in-one banking platform. Nik said “Vault has been a game changer for our AP process and we can’t wait to integrate their full solution into our finance workflows”.

Nik and team now have more time to spend on areas that are driving strategic value to the business rather than manually sending out payments. Nik said “Sherpa’s goal is to make it easy to cross borders and it’s great to see Vault making cross border payments easier as well”.

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