How Kitebird gets paid in 12 currencies and cut its payment costs by 44%
Kitebird sells outdoor gear online to customers in 30 countries. By pricing in local currencies and paying suppliers from the same balances, it cut payment costs from 3.4% to 1.9% per order.
Owen Brooks and Lena Fischer
Head of Business Banking
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Kitebird makes packable jackets, bags and camping gear for people who walk a long way. It started in a Bristol garage in 2018, and today sells online to customers in 30 countries, with a team of 34 and a warehouse in the Netherlands for European orders.
About 60% of its sales now come from outside the UK. For a long time, that was a problem disguised as good news. "Every time we grew abroad, our margin shrank a little," says Imogen Hale, Kitebird's co-founder and COO. "We were selling more and keeping less, and it took us an embarrassingly long time to work out why."
The cost of one currency
Kitebird's shop priced everything in pounds and euros. A customer in Sweden or Australia saw a price in one of those, and their own bank converted it, usually with a mark-up and sometimes with a foreign transaction fee on top. Some noticed the extra line on their statement and did not order again. Many more never reached the end of checkout.
Behind the scenes, money moved in circles. Kitebird's payment provider settled every sale into a sterling account, converting at its own rate on the way. Then Kitebird converted pounds back into euros to pay its factory in Portugal and into dollars for its fabric supplier in the US. Each conversion took a slice.
When Imogen's finance team added it all up, payment processing and currency costs came to 3.4% of every order. On a typical €140 basket, that was €4.76.
Pricing in twelve currencies
Kitebird moved its payments to Pocket in the summer of 2025. The switch took two weeks, most of it testing, and the shop now shows prices in 12 currencies, chosen from where its customers actually live: pounds, euros, dollars, Swiss francs, Swedish and Norwegian kronor, Danish kroner, złoty, Canadian and Australian dollars, yen and Singapore dollars.
Prices are set in each currency, not converted live, so a jacket costs a round CHF 189 rather than CHF 187.43. Customers pay with a card, Apple Pay or Google Pay in the currency they see, with nothing converted on their side.
The money settles into the matching balance in Kitebird's Pocket account, so Swiss franc sales land as Swiss francs. Nothing is converted unless Kitebird decides to convert it.
The day we stopped converting everything into pounds was the day our margins stopped leaking. We hold the currencies we earn, and we spend them where we owe them.
Imogen Hale, co-founder and COO, Kitebird
Paying suppliers from the same balances
The bigger saving came from the other side of the business. Kitebird's Portuguese factory invoices in euros, and its euro balance now fills up from European sales every day. Paying the factory is a transfer from one euro balance to another, with no conversion at all.
The dollar balance does the same for the fabric supplier. Only the leftover, the profit Kitebird wants to bring home, is converted to pounds, once a month, at the mid-market rate. Imogen has a rate alert set for each of the big currencies, so the conversion happens on a good day rather than on the last day of the month.
The team also uses Pocket in two places they did not expect:
Payment links for wholesale. Outdoor shops that stock Kitebird used to pay by bank transfer, often late. They now get an invoice with a payment link and usually pay by card the same day.
Tap to pay at events. Kitebird runs stands at trail races and outdoor festivals. Staff take payments on their phones with tap to pay, with no card reader to charge or lose, and the sales appear in the same account as the web shop.
Selling to customers in other countries?
Accept card and wallet payments in their currency, keep the money in matching balances, and pay suppliers without converting twice.
The numbers, a year in
Kitebird shared its figures for the twelve months before and after the switch.
Before | With Pocket | |
|---|---|---|
Currencies at checkout | 2 | 12 |
Payment and currency costs per order | 3.4% | 1.9% |
Time until sales can be spent | 3 working days | Next working day |
Checkout conversion outside the UK and eurozone | 1.8% | 2.6% |
Finance hours a month on reconciliation | About 30 | About 4 |
The fall from 3.4% to 1.9% is a 44% cut in what each order costs to collect. On last year's sales, that was just over €130,000, roughly the cost of the two people Kitebird hired for its new product range.
Reconciliation is the change the finance team talks about most. Pocket syncs with Xero, which Kitebird already used, and every sale, refund, fee and conversion arrives already matched to the right currency account.
What comes next
Kitebird plans to open its first shop, in Amsterdam, next spring, and will use the same account for its tills. It is also trialling Pocket expense cards for its event team, with receipts matched automatically by Pocket AI.
"I used to think international payments were just expensive and that was that," says Imogen. "It turns out they were expensive because we were doing them in the most expensive way possible." You can read more stories like Kitebird's on our customers page.
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Written by
Owen Brooks
Head of Business Banking
Co-author
Lena Fischer
Money Editor
