By Caroline Hometh
RocketPay LLC
Just as customers prefer to make purchases in the currency of their own countries, they also favor specific payment types. Online retailers have found that working effectively with international customers means they must offer locally preferred payment types.
While traditional credit and debit cards are utilized heavily in the United States and the United Kingdom, that is not the case throughout the world. The best example of this is in Germany where 70 percent of all online transactions are conducted using nontraditional payments. Research has shown that 24 percent of customers, globally, will abandon sales if their preferred payment options are not available.
What are the types of local payments used online internationally? They fall into four categories:
Let's take a moment to define these categories.
Let's say you are working with an e-commerce merchant who wants to expand his or her payment capabilities to be more appealing to German consumers. The real-time bank transfer widely preferred in that country is the sofortuberweisung.de. In fact, 31.1 percent of merchants in Germany are already offering this payment type. Offering this option is particularly important if your merchant wants to target young German shoppers because 66.7 percent of that demographic select sofortuberweisung.de when checking out.
Online merchants in the United States understand they need to offer automated clearing house as a payment type for their customers because it is a popular form of alternative payment in this country. Similarly, merchants selling in other countries must make informed decisions about the consumer payment preferences in those markets and then align with the appropriate partners to offer country-specific alternative payments. Sales increases and revenue will follow.
Caroline (Carrie) Hometh is the Executive Vice President, Sales for RocketPay LLC. She can be reached via email at chometh@rocket-pay.com; via office phone at 978-255-3109, wireless at 978-807-5047 and direct at 978-462-3459; via the web at www.rocket-pay.com; via Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/RocketPay/142009625847128; and via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/rocketpay-llc. She regularly tweets at: http://twitter.com/rocketpay.
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