Small business banking: are great customer service and international wire transfers mutually exclusive?

I will be watching this thread with interest because my company needs a new bank like whoa. I can tell you one thing, though: the answer is NOT Fifth Third. I'm considering Citibank, based solely on how great they are to me (as a small-income nonbusiness person), but we haven't done any real research yet.

k5.user - that is totally related and very helpful. I assume that part of the reason we're running into so much trouble actually getting paid is the security hoops our bank is making our clients jump through. Follow-up question: how can we make things easier for our European clients if we are at such a high security risk due to their preferred payment method? We're talking about payments in the $1,000-$20,000 range, so credit cards aren't always realistic. (Assume the companies we're dealing with are major corporations and there are longstanding personal relationships at play which give us personal confidence that we're not being scammed)

I don't know about the incoming wire-transfer as much as the out-going. The trojans would look to get on your system (phishing, drive bye, etc), grab your on-line banking credentials, and then either add bogus people to payroll or otherwise initiate transfers out of your account. And with wire transfers, as soon as it is sent, it is as good as gone. Many banks offer very few security measures (eg maybe a RSA token, but the trojans can grab it when you type it in) and also many banks don't follow their own procedures (like calling you up before wiring the money). Add in the bad guys can spoof your phone # and pretend to be you when calling the bank. http://krebsonsecurity.com/category/smallbizvictims/ researches/writes about this security area.

What first came to mind was BMO Harris. They're based in Chicago, but are owned by the Bank of Montreal. International transactions are supposed to be one of their specialties. I also know someone who works at their HQ and it doesn't sound nearly as soul sucking as working for other banks or financial institutions. I like to assume banking with them would also be non soul-sucking And phunniemee is totally right - Fifth Third is never the answer. Never.

I run the business side for several small businesses. One of which uses Bank of America--total fail. Do not use them. We operate about 4-5 million dollars through them a year and they couldn't care less about us. Conversely, I use US Bank for all of our other business accounts, and I've found them to be wonderful. You want to get signed up with the Private Client Reserve Account. This gives you an actual, live person you can call for bank transactions or issues. I actually have a person I can email with a wire request, and then they call me and confirm I am the person who requested the wire and other pertinent details. I could also set up the key fob thing, but haven't needed to yet. I used to use a local bank, but I had to go to a national bank when I moved and needed banking in many locations throughout the country. I've found US Bank has treated me like a local bank did. I don't know about the international wires though, all our business is within the US. If you'd like me to try to get the name of someone at the Private Client Reserve in San Francisco, memail me and I'll ask my person.