Multicurrency payments acceptance: how to do it effectively

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Multicurrency payments acceptance: how to do it effectively

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All businesses face a common challenge when testing the waters before expanding or entering a new market: processing multi-currency payments efficiently.

Multicurrency payment acceptance tricks

Supporting various payment options and foreign currencies, international businesses still prefer settlements in a currency of their choice. And here comes another issue — dependence on fluctuations of currency exchange. Anticipating the possible questions resulting therefrom, we’ve compiled this brief overview of handling FX payments and currency conversion.

Challenges of expansion to international markets

Entering new markets opens up new opportunities for any business; it’s not up for discussion. Still, the process is fraught with certain difficulties and risks. The highest priority task is to conduct thorough market research and explore local shopping habits. This will definitely help you optimise your efforts and resources and achieve better results. It’s essential to realise that cross-border sales and payment acceptance in customers’ preferred currencies are integral components of a successful business expansion.

3 steps to efficient international business

We have compiled a quick 3-step guide to give you a hand with processing multicurrency payments.

Step 1. Choosing a multicurrency payments provider

Along with marketing efforts to increase your brand visibility and win over a new audience, you need to gain the backing of a reliable payment partner. Finding a proper payment processor to fulfil your business needs can be the only challenge. It’s not that easy, but a reliable and feature-rich solution can solve almost all the other issues.

Apart from accepting and processing online FX payments, a multi-currency payment processor allows you to display prices and pay in different currencies. While choosing a payment platform for your business, pay attention to the following criteria:

  • Compatibility with your location. Usually, payment processors have a list of countries they work with.
  • List of supported currencies. Double-check what currencies you plan to process and which ones to use for settling your balances.
  • Terms of having a multi-currency merchant account. Sometimes it presumes additional fees.
  • Choice of checkout languages. A multilanguage checkout with automatic localisation ceased to be a bonus a long time ago; now, it’s a must. Your foreign customers should be able to see and understand all the payment details.

Step 2. Displaying prices

Listing your prices in local currencies for each market is important. All in all, merchants do everything for their customers’ convenience and satisfaction. Displaying prices in customers’ local currency is one of the pillars of a successful international sales strategy. It’s like being hospitable with your guests. Clients pay attention to the amount in price, but not always to the currency. So any incongruity in these points may cause misconceptions and lead to chargebacks.

Fx payments processing and settlement resemble real jugglery for laypeople. One of the essential parts of this process is called currency conversion. But all the magic happens under the hood. That’s why trying to handle it alone might be a real challenge for businesses. Opting for the help of professionals is much better.

Step 3. Fighting fraud

Unfortunately, cross-border sales are often interrelated with a higher risk of different types of fraud. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expand your business; it’s just a reason for you to pay special attention to certain aspects of global sales. These purchasers’ details can be helpful for fraud prevention:

  1. Geography. Check the order details thoroughly (country, IP address) and be careful with certain countries, which statistically have a higher risk of fraud.
  2. Purchaser’s email. The address can be another red flag. Watch out for strange names, signs, or addresses from anonymous email services. But be sure not to go to extremes — overreacting with every strange or funny email address won’t do any good.
  3. Purchase time. Although online shopping is a 24/7 activity, keep in mind that the most active times for fraudsters are early morning and late night. One more point to pay special attention to are repeated purchases paid for with the same card.
  4. Shipping address. Pay due attention to the shipping address while processing your orders. If the address seems weird and does not correspond to the billing one, you’d better check it. For instance, you may ask the issuing bank to double-check the information about a certain customer if their billing and shipping addresses do not coincide. Sometimes a customer may wish to pay in another currency or change their shopping habits some other way — this may also raise a red flag. Still, none of these circumstances can give businesses a 100% guarantee whether it is fraud or not.

Unfortunately, one can’t always be sure about the criteria that proclaim a fraudster. In some cases, the situation requires a thorough analysis and listening to one’s gut. So, before accusing a purchaser of fraud, check all the available data and, if possible, analyse it in the context of previous purchases. The best option is to choose a reliable payment processor with anti-fraud systems.

Benefits of becoming an international seller

Online merchants should consider coming up with a strategy for gaining cross-border customers, as there’s a growing need for international shopping. Expanding internationally becomes easier with the right multi-currency payment processing company that delivers solutions tailored to various markets.

When you offer multi-currency prices, your customers don’t have to pay extra fees for currency conversion, which can positively impact your sales. Customers are more likely to buy from your site repeatedly when you allow them to pay in their local currencies. So, if you want to improve your business performance, providing a customer-friendly payment solution is in your best interest.

Concluding the above mentioned, it should be noted that efficient multicurrency payments processing is one of the essential parts of any cross-border sales strategy. Customers prefer to pay for services and products in their local currencies. This option being impossible, businesses may end up with abandoned carts and lost sales.

Corefy features a range of fx rate sources to help you accept payments in any currency. Our payment orchestration platform allows merchants to manage the multicurrency transaction flows hassle-freely.

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