Go Global or Go Home. The Five Elements to Cross-Border Commerce Success.

Discover the steps to ready your business for international growth.

Ninety-three percent of businesses across the United States and Europe consider cross-border commerce a high priority in 2022, according to Rapyd’s Global Cross-Border Commerce 2022 Guide. And with the cross-border commerce market size expected to reach $153 trillion globally, growing at 5% CAGR, it’s no wonder businesses are going global.

While the cross-border ecommerce market is a high priority for businesses, it’s not always easy for companies to understand their readiness, or to identify what steps to take to prepare for international growth.

To help businesses of all sizes evaluate their readiness for cross-border commerce and to evaluate the opportunities and risks, Rapyd commissioned a study, the Global Cross-Border Commerce 2022 Guide. Using the results we identified five key elements of Cross-Border Commerce that businesses must address to succeed when growing their sales overseas. These key elements are localization, risk management, payments and finance, operations, and organizational readiness.  

If you’re wondering whether your company is ready to go global, try our Cross-Border Readiness Assessment. Just answer a couple of short questions and get your own personalized cross-border readiness report card.

What are the Five Elements of Cross-Border Commerce?

Localization 

Customers expect a localized experience that makes purchases intuitive and easy. Make this happen by communicating in your customer’s language, displaying in local currencies, and supporting local payment methods.

Communicate in your Customer’s Language

Having a professionally translated site navigation, product descriptions, reviews, and instructions throughout the checkout experience helps build trust. Modern browsers may be able to translate sites, but they leave the content feeling foreign and unfamiliar. Consider providing customer support and answering customer questions in local languages for a better buying experience in your top markets.

Display in Local Currencies

Displaying prices in local currency is not optional. Research by Retail Info System shows that one in four shoppers will leave a website if their local currency is not displayed. Make cross-border buying easier by displaying local currencies.

Support Local Payment Methods 

Today up to 16 percent of shoppers will abandon a transaction when their preferred payment option isn’t available (FuturePay). And preferred online payment methods can vary significantly from country to country.  Many western countries favor cards, while in Southeast Asia, offering bank transfers and ewallets is a must. Work with a payments provider like Rapyd to simplify global commerce by offering local payment methods across 100+ countries with one integration.

2. Risk Management 

No matter your business size, risk management can’t be ignored when expanding overseas. To manage risk, be prepared by working with a global payments vendor that offers know your customer (KYC) and know your business (KYB) protections, customizes your fraud rules, and offers cross-border payment fraud protection that goes beyond cards.

Integrated KYC and KYB Means Better Security  

The most effective fraud management systems use AI and machine learning to assess patterns in transactions in real-time for faster fraud detection and identity verification. Fraudsters are becoming increasingly sophisticated, which can be especially challenging to detect for online marketplaces processing hundreds of transactions in real-time.

Staying a step ahead of fraudsters means that marketplaces and merchants need to be extra vigilant and ensure their payment processors provide built-in know your customer (KYC) and know your business (KYB) infrastructure and processes. 

Customize Your Fraud Rules

When businesses invest in fraud protection technology, it can help them identify chargeback fraud opportunities before they occur. Setting up rules to block IP addresses or countries and creating alerts to review high-value transactions before they are approved are just a few examples of how customization can help you to decrease the number of fraudulent transactions. 

Cross Border Payment Fraud Protection that Goes Beyond Cards

Reduce card and local payment method acceptance risks while safeguarding your customers’ shopping experiences worldwide. Having an always-on fraud protection partner can seriously reduce your risk of disputes stemming from fraud overall. Rapyd Protect is embedded into Rapyd’s platforms, so you are protected from day one. Take advantage of a top-notch anti-fraud platform with no additional cost, no fees and no additional coding.

3. Payments & Finance 

Payments and financial services can look very different from country to country. To ensure you’re serving your global audience, you should accept more local and alternative payment methods to expand your customer base, save time by streamlining your payments and keep in mind that more transparency is better for business.

Accept More Payment Methods to Expand your Customer Base

The most popular online payment methods vary significantly from country to country.  Today up to 16 percent of shoppers will abandon a transaction when their preferred payment option isn’t available (FuturePay). Many western countries favor cards, while in Southeast Asia, offering bank transfers and ewallets is a must. Work with a payments provider like Rapyd to simplify global commerce by offering local payment methods across 100+ countries with one integration.

Save Time By Streamlining Your Payments 

Consider working with a single vendor to provide cross-border payment acceptance and disbursements. Accept and hold funds in different currencies and settle payments in multiple currencies. Use a single platform that can do it all with a single view for reconciliation, reporting and funds settlement across currencies.

More Transparency is Better for Business

Modern digital ledgers are critical in providing complete visibility into your cash inflow and outflow. Businesses can ensure more accurate accounts and better cash liquidity with detailed reconciliation reporting. 

4. Operations 

Are you getting ready to scale your operations globally? It doesn’t have to be complicated. Be sure to offer responsive and multilingual customer support, make your tech-stack scale and find ways to simplify your shipping.

Offer Responsive and Multilingual Customer Support

Customers need to get their questions answered – and fast. Address these needs and keep them coming back for more with instant AI chat support to your website and multilingual customer support for more complex customer queries. 

Make Your Tech-Stack Scale

Assess your technology stack to ensure that it is flexible enough to do business in new regions. Your tech stack plays a significant role in your scalability, meaning a poor tech choice can raise costs or hold-back development down the line. Be sure your stack lets you easily integrate diverse payment methods, like Rapyd Collect does with our simple API and Rapyd Checkout solutions.

Simplify Your Shipping

While different businesses will need different approaches, you may find that centralizing your regional shipping and logistics centers leads to better oversight and coordination. Whenever possible, work with local vendors who understand the local market. You can also decrease hefty shipping costs by getting smart with your packaging, negotiating with logistics companies, or passing on costs to customers.

5. Organizational Readiness 

Get ready, set, and go global! When improving your organizational readiness for international commerce, you’ll want to work with local experts to reduce the regulatory burden and be sure to structure your business to support a regional strategy.

Work with Local Experts to Reduce the Regulatory Burden 

As a merchant, you need to understand your obligations to meet local regulatory requirements. Staying in compliance with local regulations and managing KYC and ID verification while insulating yourself from security and fraud risks can seem challenging. However, you can reduce the regulatory burden with the right vendor or partner who can handle local regulation requirements on your behalf.

Structure your Business to Support a Regional Strategy

Don’t silo your cross-border strategy. The most effective way to go global is to incorporate your global initiatives into other prioritized initiatives such as ecommerce strategies, website/user-experience efforts, personalization, and more. Plan and consider the specific cross-border impacts and how each implementation can extend your reach into new markets. 

Get ready, set, and GO global

If you’re looking to do business globally, you need a fintech partner that enables you to embed local payment methods and financial services beyond just credit cards. 

By utilizing Rapyd’s global payments network and flexible cross-border platform, businesses can accept international payments with local ewallets, bank transfers, cash, credit and debit cards. Rapyd is the fastest way to power local payments anywhere in the world, enabling companies to expand globally without building out complex payments infrastructure.

Sources:

Retail Information Systems. The Correct Change: Foreign Exchange Is the Secret Weapon to Solve Cart Abandonment.  https://risnews.com/correct-change-foreign-exchange-secret-weapon-solve-cart-abandonment 

FuturePay. The Big Ticket Report.

https://futurepay.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/FuturePay-The-Big-Ticket-Report-2017-1.pdf