Causeway

A cross-border payments website built around the one number a pricing page never states: the exchange-rate markup.

The demo's cheaper provider is the one advertising a fee. Send GBP 2,000 to the eurozone on a mid-market rate of 1.17 and the zero-commission broker delivers EUR 2,272.14, taking EUR 67.86 or 2.90%, all of it in the rate. The one advertising a GBP 11.40 fee delivers EUR 2,318.52 and takes EUR 21.48, or 0.92%. That is EUR 46.38 a transfer and EUR 1,113.12 a year at two transfers a month, and the headline fee points the wrong way.

The built-in calculator splits the cost into the five places it can hide, as a waterfall rather than five separate guesses: a flat fee, a percentage fee, the rate markup, an intermediary deduction and a receiving-bank charge. Each stage is computed from the money left after the one before it, so the five parts always sum back to the total exactly. It runs backwards too, solving for what you must send so a recipient receives an exact amount. Every input is a property control, twenty send and receive currencies included, and nothing needs code.

Twelve routes: home, a cost breakdown, CMS provider archetypes with a detail page each, CMS corridors with a detail page each, a timing page, a volume page for business payers, about, an enquiry form with pending and success states, privacy, terms and a custom 404.

Ten colour tokens, every one carrying a dark value, so the site has a real dark scheme and a rebrand is ten edits rather than a hunt for hex codes. Ten text presets across three breakpoints in Bricolage Grotesque over Sora. No photography ships with it, which means nothing to license and nothing to replace: it is type, hairline rules, colour and one instrument.