The US dollar accounted for 70% of international payments made by UK businesses using iBanFirst in the first half of 2026, according to the second edition of iBanFirst's Speed of International Payments barometer. The figure has not moved all that significantly since 2025, when it stood at 72%, according to the transaction data. This matters because it leaves businesses more exposed to currency swings, especially as political talk about ditching the dollar gets louder. If a business hasn't locked in an exchange rate in advance, the pound cost of a dollar payment can move between agreeing the deal and the money actually landing, sometimes by thousands of pounds on a single transaction. The dollar's share of payments was 16 percentage points higher among UK clients than across iBanFirst's European client base, where it stood at 54% over the same period. The gap was the same in 2025, when the UK figure was 72% compared with 56% in Europe. The findings reflect iBanFirst's own customer base rather than the wider UK business population, and measure the number of payments made, not their total value. Why dollar use persists "Dollar invoicing is often set by the supplier, not the buyer," said Vivek Savani, UK Country Manager at iBanFirst. "A UK business importing from Asia or the US is frequently just quoted in dollars. Changing that usually means renegotiating a supply contract, not just adjusting a payment instruction, which is why it doesn't happen quickly even when the political conversation has moved on." "De-dollarisation is moving much faster in political rhetoric than in corporate behaviour," Savani added. "Commercial relationships and payment habits are much stickier than geopolitics." Not every payment carries that risk equally. A business that has agreed an exchange rate in advance, through an FX forward payment for example, will not see the sterling cost of that payment move with the market. For a payment made at the prevailing GBP/USD exchange rate, a 1% movement over a day or two could change the sterling cost of a USD payment of $1 million by approximately £7,600. This is based on a GBP/USD rate of around 1.32 on 13 October 2026. 20% of iBanFirst's UK clients use an FX forward payment to agree an exchange rate in advance for their underlying dollar payments. Where the dollar shows up most USD to China and USD to Hong Kong were the UK's two most common payment corridors in the first half of 2026, together accounting for a quarter of UK outbound payments tracked (by number of payments, not value). Neither featured among the UK's six largest payment corridors in 2025, when the smallest of those six accounted for under 1% of payments. These routes also tend to settle more slowly than payments to the US or within the UK, Savani said. "That's partly down to time zones, and partly down to the extra compliance and sanctions screening that payments into these corridors can attract. It's a separate question from currency risk, though, which depends on when a business fixes its exchange rate, not on how long the payment takes to clear." Savani said the dollar's dominance in these routes is unlikely to disappear quickly, but it may not be permanent either. "We're already seeing some trade tensions push exporters towards settling in renminbi, though its share of global payments is still small," he said. "There are also central bank-backed platforms being built specifically to give Asian economies a way to settle trade without routing through the dollar. None of that changes the picture today, but it's worth UK businesses watching, especially those increasingly paying into these corridors."NoYesPayments13 Oct, 2026