A BlueSnap survey of 100 senior business executives showed that 41% were experiencing international payment authorisation rates of less than 70%
The key study findings:
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68 percent fail to take advantage of local acquiring – resulting in lower sales due to sub-par authorisation rates and increased costs due to high cross-border fees
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Almost half estimate that they’ve lost up to 10 percent of their revenue by not offering the right payment options
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31 percent are mired in technical debt trying to manage 4 or more payment providers
BlueSnap, a payment company helping businesses accept payments in over 200 geographies, has released its findings on the key challenges businesses face when it comes to cross-border payments.
The survey highlights the drastic losses in sales and revenue and hefty expenses companies can incur if they do not optimize how they process payments on goods and services sold internationally.
Conducted in partnership with Pulse, the new study found that 68 percent of companies that sell to international customers are processing payments in the country or region where their business is headquartered rather than where they have a local entity and their customer is located (cross border). This can result in dramatically lower payment authorisations rates. According to the study, 41 percent of companies reported payment authorisation rates of 70 percent or less, meaning businesses could be losing more than 30 percent of their international sales.
Nikhita Hyett, Managing Director, Europe at BlueSnap said: “Over the last year, we have seen a lot of businesses switch up their business models with a renewed focus on online sales as physical stores shut down due to lockdown. So as their customer base opens up, due to cross-border trade, businesses must ensure they have the right payment solutions in place to maximise sales and reduce costs. At BlueSnap, we are proud to be helping many businesses avoid this 30 percent loss in international sales, through our suite of cross-border products and services.”
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Without the right payments partner, processing payments “cross-border” can result in significant cross-border and foreign exchange fees applied to both businesses and potentially their customers for each transaction. Cross-border fees can add more than 1 percent to the payment processing cost for each transaction.
With the Bank of England reporting that cross-border payment volumes will reach $250 trillion by 2027, the importance of updating and optimizing wholesale and retail payments for an increasingly globalized eCommerce market has never been more apparent.
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Less visible is the tremendous technical debt businesses are saddled with – nearly a third of companies are managing four or more payment providers to facilitate international sales. Business leaders report challenges with keeping all the payment integrations up to date, managing multiple vendor relationships, and inconsistency of capabilities across payment integrations. In fact, almost half of businesses estimate that they’ve lost up to 10 percent of revenue by not offering the right payment options.
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