I’ve done plenty of SWIFT international wire transfers. Total cost in practice is much higher than the “cap” of $35, especially when both parties costs are taken into account.
The biggest hit is usually the foreign currency conversion spread which is enormously unfavorable compared to the forex spot rate.
Then there are lots of problems if your bank doesn’t have a direct correspondant bank relationship with the Hong Kong bank and instead relies on other banks to handle that for them - this can lead to delays of up to a week and quite often leads to a link in the chain rejecting things for some reason (perhaps fraud checks or “know your customer” issues or perhaps one bank stripped all leading zeroes from the account number).
International wires are a pain in the ass, especially for relatively low sums like a few thousand dollars.
Personally, I use TransferWise for most international transactions now - it’s fast and the spread is much better.
Wire transfers can take days (I’ve once had it take more than a month), generally aren’t reversible, and it’s difficult to verify everything is correct beyond read through what you’ve entered multiple times.
There’s also no receipt you can point to to show the intended recipient was who received it.
That’s a huge disincentive for the client/customer to pay that way, and for the receiver the large delay in receiving money can be limiting as well.
Obviously it’s absurd that we’re still in this position in 2020 (that there isn’t a close approximation of instantaneous international transactions at a reasonable - eg fixed - price is beyond stupid)
That's a rather pessimistic view of bank transfer. Companies doing B2B transactions above 10k regularly use and often prefer bank transfer. It's more security for both the buyer and the seller, no fees, and cheaper exchange rate if changing currencies.
The reversibility of card charges is a huge con, not a pro. Don't want it for large transactions, especially if involving physical goods (non recoverable costs). Besides, chargeback is a privilege reserved to consumers, it's not available to business accounts.
If it's a Hong Kong customer, obviously doing international business, they're most likely banking with HSBC and have good online banking with instant bank transfer.
Small credit unions, and I don’t recall seeing any on NZ banking sites when I grew up - they essentially have domestic WTs because you can send money to anyone’s bank account online (in NZ having someone’s bank account number means you can send them money, not the US absurdity of withdrawing money)