Any company either issuing or receiving large payments in foreign currencies is likely to incur significant transaction and hedging fees. An interesting alternative for mitigating these fees is to use a gold-backed currency exchange.
To use such an exchange, you purchase gold at the current spot rate from the exchange, which stores the gold in its vaults, usually located in an offshore financial center in the Jersey Islands or the Caribbean. Then have your business partners create an account with the same exchange. To make a payment to your business partner, log into your account at the exchange, enter the amount of funds to be transferred, and the account number of the recipient, and the exchange instantly shifts ownership in the gold to the other party. The other party then sells the gold back to the exchange or to a third party (which depends on the exchange being used). Your transaction fee will be about $2 (far less than a wire transfer), depending on the exchange. There is also a small monthly fee to maintain an account at most of the exchanges.
On the downside, please remember that the value of gold fluctuates constantly, so always keep your gold holdings at the exchange to a minimum. Also, several of the exchanges do not reveal the amount of their gold holdings, so there is a risk that they are not maintaining a 100% reserve ratio. Further, make sure that the exchange is fully insured, is audited by a reputable firm, and has excellent security over their gold reserves. I can itemize which reserves have unsavory reputations, but to avoid lawsuits, will instead direct you to Wikipedia, which maintains reviews of nine exchanges under the key words “digital gold currency.”
The most reputable of the gold backed currency exchanges are Goldmoney (at www.goldmoney.com), and E-Gold (at www.e-gold.com). Goldmoney is somewhat easier to use, since they readily buy back gold from account holders, whereas E-Gold uses third parties for this task.