How well businesses adapt their e-commerce payment management strategies will be a key factor in determining their long-term sustainability in the growing international e-commerce world.
Michael Bradley, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, CyberSource, shares the five key things businesses should consider while choosing a global payment acceptance platform that will enable them to extend the reach of their business beyond borders:
1. Understanding unique payment preferences, while expanding reach - taking into account the thriving growth of cross-border transactions, businesses need to be aware that payment preferences of consumers generally differ across continents, countries, and even cities. Adopting a payment management solution that would cover a variety of currencies and payment options would offer customers a vast range of payment options. Funding and settlement in multiple currencies offers customers flexibility and convenience. This allows for seamless cross-border expansion, making it easier for businesses to penetrate into more markets.
2. Full visibility, whenever you need it – e-commerce transactions form a complex web of payment management procedures, involving multiple channels of worldwide banks and processors. This creates an even more complicated process for the merchant in reconciling payment activity to bank statements. In light of this, businesses need to look for efficient, simplified connections.
Getting access to a full range of reports that standardize payment reporting across banks and processors can simplify the tedious process of reconciliation. In addition, complementing these reports with automated payment reconciliation services may assist businesses in eliminating many of the manual processes associated with payment reconciliation and chargeback management. Automatic reporting and reconciliation is dependent on the ability of a payment platform to integrate the processes with the payment data into a central reporting system. With an integrated administration interface, businesses can obtain access to reports, case status and administration for simplified payment management.
3. Keeping tax calculation simple and fast - The nature of eCommerce is time-critical, as consumers’ inclination to purchase tends to depend on how simple the payment process is. Therefore, businesses should implement superior real-time tax calculation for sales originating from different parts of the world, so that they can provide prompt and accurate total order amount for customers at checkout. This would then make the payment process for customers fast and hassle-free, further enhancing the customer payment journey experience.
4. Enabling security, ensuring confidence - Businesses should also look out for fraud management solutions that they can use to protect themselves from the risk of online fraud and habitual chargeback offenders. These solutions are usually equipped with the ability to provide the probability of a fraudulent transaction, coupled with a secure authentication process.
When such a secure authentication process is implemented, consumers may be protected from the fraudulent use of their card at a merchant site. This goes a long way towards building consumer confidence in online payment mechanisms, prompting greater use and increased or repeated spending.
5. Scalability and adaptability - With the significant growth of cross-border eCommerce, businesses should also look for payment acceptance methods that are bank agnostic. These equip merchants with the convenience of switching, adding, or removing payment acceptance options at any point of time, without having to replace an entire system.
In addition, merchants should choose a platform that can be integrated with major commerce platforms, sales systems, order management, and Enterprise Resource Planning systems so as to enhance the adaptability to any change.
Businesses will need a robust all-encompassing global payment acceptance system that is nimble enough to adapt to new market conditions, an expanding customer base, and ever-changing customer needs. This will ultimately help businesses to reach more customers, convert more orders globally, increase revenue capture and retention, get to market faster and scale more easily.
CyberSource provides payment management services which enable enterprise and mid-size merchants to transact sales domestically and globally via internet, mobile, call center and face-to-face sales channels.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now