One of the biggest questions we had when we were working with UGC creators was how do we send money to them? You might be asking yourself that right now, so let me tell you the best methods, from experience.

For context: we worked with UGC creators to scale our mobile app Pray Screen, which was a religious screen time app (like Opal, but you'd have to pray to unlock your apps). It scaled to 10k revenue per week super quickly, and we sold it within 6 months. We felt the pain of working with creators firsthand, so I am going to give you all the information I wish I knew before we started on our journey.

Let's jump into it.

The Payout Methods (Global and US)

PayPal (Global)

We are starting with the most common one for paying creators globally. PayPal is a great option for sending money to creators around the world, they have great protections, and will only charge you about 3% for the transaction.

You will have to link your bank account or a have a card on file, add your creator's email to a list of recipients, and then fire it off.

Wise (Global)

Wise is a great option for paying creators around the world, if it's an option. They allow near-instant transfers to almost all the countries in the world, and favourable exchange rates. You will have to apply for a business account, otherwise you risk losing access to your account permanently. Fees are usually $0 if you are sending between Wise accounts, but there are fees associated with adding money to your Wise account; these vary with the deposit method.

Creators generally don't have Wise, in my experience, but if they do this is a great option.

Bank Transfer (Global)

This is the slowest out of the global options, but it's the most likely to work every time and in many cases this will be what international creator prefer. There is no setup, no complication besides getting the SWIFT code, institution code, transit number, and account numbers correct. These can usually be found on printouts they can get from their bank either online or in-person.

Fees with this vary, if you're transacting with a wire it's usually around $35-50 per wire on the sending side, and commonly has a small $10-15 fee on the receiving end (depending on their bank). There are also foreign exchange markups that banks apply if you are transacting across different currencies. There can be intermediary fees as well, but this depends on where you're sending the money to; if these apply, they can be an additional $15-50+.

You can very often have trouble sending money like this, some banks will give you a hard time sending money to specific countries they have flagged (which is surprisingly more than you'd expect), and if you do too many wires, they may flag your account for review. This is probably not the most ideal transfer option, but it's a very standard one that creators will likely be familiar with.

Venmo (US)

This is a near instant option. It involves loading money into your digital wallet and sending money to your US based creator. You may be flagged for sending business transactions through a personal account, so be wary of that. This is a very common option creators in the US are used to using. There are not very many protections when it comes to getting your money back from possible scams, so also note that. Fees vary for loading money into Venmo, and fees vary sending money between Venmo users.

This is a great option if you're paying out US based creators and can tolerate a bit of risk on both the lacking scam protections and sending business transactions through a personal account.

CashApp (US)

This is another near instant option. Similarly to Venmo, it involves loading money into your digital wallet and sending money to your US based creator through the app itself. The same issues with using a personal account for business reasons apply, but this can be a very common way creators in the US want to get paid out. Fees vary depending on the services used, but they can be as high as 3% on standard transactions, and an additional 0.5-1.75% for instant transfers.

This is a good option if you're paying out US based creators and can tolerate the same risks mentioned with Venmo.

Zelle (US)

Zelle is the least common US money transfer app used by creators. You will find some, but not many. This is a good option for a simple way to transmit money from your bank account. Fees are minimal since they are bank-to-bank transfers, but you'll have to wait for business days for the transfer to actually go through, in some cases. There are also limits to how much you can send through Zelle until the relationship with the receiving party has matured.

ACH Transfer (US)

If you have the bank details for the US based creator you want to pay, ACH is another great option. You can send the money directly to their bank account following much of the same logic as the international transfer, just without the delay and high fees. ACH fees have a cap of $5, and are near instant in many cases. In rare times you'll have to wait a few business days for the money to clear, but that is very bank dependent.

What to do when everyone wants a different payout method?

One of the issues we ran into a lot was managing a group of creators, usually around 10, and having to pay them out with a bunch of different options. A lot of creators are not very flexible with how they want to be paid out, which means you're sometimes doing a mix of Venmo, ACH, and PayPal (like we did for our campaigns).

That means you're collecting all those different payment methods and their associated details, loading up each wallet separately, and then firing money off. With 10 creators is doable with a couple of hours, but now if you're working with 30, 40, or even 100 (like some agencies), it can be such a pain. Many UGC agencies we've spoken to have to set aside entire days to handle all the creator payouts.

This is why we built Grade. To put it simply, all you have to do to payout creators (whether you're a mobile app founder, a brand, an agency, or whatever) is top-up your wallet in Grade, with $0 platform fees, and send a link to your creator.

No onboarding, no exchanging payment details, they just get a link in their email and they can take the money out with any payment method in the world. Over 190 countries, and every single currency and payout method you can imagine, all in one link.

Save yourself the time, give Grade a try. It's literally free for mobile app founders, brands, and agencies; we just take a small 5% fee on the creator side.

Creators with Grade have never been paid out faster, they love it.

Don't forget about tax forms!

One last thing!

This is always overlooked. We have a whole other article about how to handle tax forms, but it's important for you to know: you must collect and file tax forms for the creators you work with.

Grade handles all of this automatically. We collect the tax forms, validate them, and file the 1099s for you. One less thing to worry about.