Becoming Multicultural: Accepting Payments Worldwide
Many companies currently want to expand their operations to new geographies and start accepting payments in different currencies. Globalization takes its toll on the payment services market as well. As a result, they have to answer similar questions.
People study foreign languages and cultures for different reasons. Some just want to be able to buy groceries when abroad. Others want to read foreign books or sing foreign songs. And someone might identify himself with a foreign culture and try to embrace it in its entirety.
Similarly, every company that expands internationally has its reasons for doing so. And it should also have a clear vision of how With the advance of globalization, these questions become more relevant regarding payments.
Types of companies that need the international presence
- Product and service vendors that want to accept payments in different countries.
- Franchisors that have franchisees in different countries. This option usually involves processing solutions for all franchisees.
- Software vendors that want to support several processing solutions in each target country.
Here are four common questions you should answer before start accepting payments worldwide
- Do you need only to authorize transactions in foreign currencies? Do you need to perform both authorization and settlement of transactions in foreign currencies? Or do you need to perform transaction settlement in the local currency of your target country? If yes, then you need to have a local bank relationship. If you only need to authorize transactions in the local currency, then it is sufficient to have a relationship with an acquiring bank that supports respective currency conversion.
- Do you need one processing/acquiring partner at most in each country? Or do you need to support several processing solutions for each of your target geographies? Just like we said above, the first option is more common for franchisors, while the second one is typical for international software vendors.
- How many phases does the payment processing cycle have in your target geographies? In some countries, such as the USA and Canada, bank transfers occur in one phase, through nation-wide clearinghouses.
- Do you need to support only card-not-present foreign-currency transactions or card-present transactions as well? You will need to have a bank account in the local currency of your target country. Moreover, if you need to handle card-present transactions in a foreign country, you will need to implement some EMV terminal solution. This will require additional efforts from you.
Your choice of international payment processing solutions will depend on your answers to these and some other questions. Going global in terms of payment services is a tricky process. Some solutions will require you to have a tax ID in your target country. Others will not. Plus, there are additional cross-border transaction processing fees.
If you are seriously considering the prospect of accepting payments internationally, feel free to consult our specialists at unipaygateway.com. We have already helped many businesses, similar to yours, to start operating in new geographies smoothly and seamlessly.