Difficulty in cross-border payments

Almost all cross-border e-commerce purchases face the risk of hidden costs caused by payment methods and foreign currencies, affecting consumers’ buying decisions. On average, more than 78% of cross-border shoppers abandon their shopping carts if they cannot make a transaction in their local currency or they feel uncomfortable buying in a foreign currency. Ensuring a good checkout experience in the payment process is vital to customer attraction and retention for any e-commerce platform, including social cross-border.

When a shopper makes a cross-border purchase, it involves a varying selection of players such as their bank, their merchant’s bank, payment processor, card network, foreign exchange, issuing bank, and acquiring bank. Ultimately, all of these add up and increase their overall purchase price. International payments are indeed expensive; unfavorable rates, processing fees and other charges have remained consistently high. Also, there are myriad payment-related challenges such as time to settlement, cost of payments, split payments, and one-click payments, indicating how important an effective cross-border payment solution is for global e-commerce platforms hoping to grow internationally.