Country Specific Alternative Payments

There’s been a lot of press lately on this subject—most of which is being generated by companies that focus on this rapidly emerging trend. The reality is that alternative payment transactions account for a very small percentage of transactions and there are challenges associated with them. Merchants complain that some alternative payment transactions are difficult to execute because the settlement process affects how they ship product. There is a lot of paperwork involved with certain types and backend operations can be altered significantly. At times, this translates to a delay in shipments and customer dissatisfaction. Despite these obstacles, merchants are clamoring for alternative payments. They’re looking for someone who can provide the ability to process these different payment types. Even if they’re not being used the majority of the time, you stand a better chance of retaining a merchant if you can check that box.

What exactly are these payment types? Simply put, they’re payment types that are non-traditional to the merchant’s country of origin. Traditional cards such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express are used worldwide and are not country specific. On the other hand, Discover is heavily used in the United States and is only now being offered in a couple of countries through its relationship with JCB. That makes it an alternative payment type outside of the U.S.

A very popular alternative payment is bank transfers. They occur in real time so merchants get their money faster and can ship product quicker. Most European countries offer bank transfers and many countries also have their own credit cards. For example, France has Carte Bleue, Germany has Giropay, Italy uses CartaSi and Sweden has Nordea. These are all examples of these payment types.

Country specific online debit transactions have become important in the e-commerce industry for a number of reasons. Marketers are looking for every possible way to not lose a sale. If an on-line consumer is shopping in their chosen currency, heads over to checkout and doesn’t have the option of using a specific card or bank transfer, they will likely abandon the sale. Because of the worldwide acceptance and ease of online shipping, the Internet has opened an entire new channel of service with alternative payment processing.

In addition to the benefit of retaining customers and increasing sales, alternative payments also represent a savings in fees. Fees normally associated with traditional credit cards are not applied to alternative payment methods.

Your alternative payment provider must offer a comprehensive list of country-specific payment methods and a single technical interface to all those forms of payments with a single set of reporting on the back end. Whether your merchant has customers in Italy, or Great Britain or Japan, your provider must be able to advise you on exactly which payment type matches your merchants’ needs. IP address location tools are very important so you can recognize where your merchants’ customers are coming from and default the payment normally offered in that country. Your back-end systems may have to be altered for these payment types. For digital merchants, it won’t matter but for physical goods merchants, the back-end operations will be affected. For this reason, it is imperative that you have an experienced and capable alternative payment provider to efficiently facilitate processing.

Equally important is technical functionality. For example, there are industry-specific features that your provider must possess such as auto top-up, billing-on-demand and recurring billing. Auto top-up provides a safe and secure way to automatically top-up credit whenever the balance falls below a certain level. Billing-on-demand enables merchants to automatically debit transactions from the customer’s account without requiring the customer to authorize it each time—such as an Easy Pass. Recurring billing allows merchants to automatically bill their customers’ bank accounts, credit/debit cards or e-wallet on a regular basis with a fixed amount of money.

What types of merchants work best with these payment types? There is no differentiation. The challenge lies in selling them. Country-specific alternative payments can be confusing, require a substantial amount of work to set up and can delay the merchant account set up. You will make more money and sell faster with traditional payment types. Alternative methods are complex solutions and this is where having the right alternative payment provider comes into play. However, if you are asked about alternative payments during a presentation or receive a specific request in a proposal, then by all means take that opportunity to close the sale with that option.

RocketPay delivers multicurrency merchant accounts and is a leading source of expertise for international ecommerce. We enable card-not-present merchants to reach customers in new markets worldwide with secure, easy-to-integrate global payment solutions. With RocketPay you have access to more than 32 currencies in 200 countries, and a full menu of 60 country specific payment solutions. Ask us how we can help you grow your international sales.