Best Ways to Handle International E-Commerce Payments

Presently and without any sign of slowing down, more and more people now prefer to shop online. If your online business is not yet catering to international customers, you’re missing out on a lot of business. Having international customers can significantly expand your brand’s reach and increase its overall profit potentials. It is a known fact however that the success of your online business growth requires efficient, safe, and secure solutions for e-commerce payments. Without these services for cross-border transactions, international customers usually find it difficult to trust any e-commerce business. This significantly affects the bottom line and profits of most e-commerce businesses. As a way out, here is what you can do to optimize global payment solutions for your e-commerce website. 

Partner With Reputable Payment Gateways

Partnering with reputable gateways for secure payment methods is hugely crucial nowadays. This is because of the significant rise in cybercrime, particularly identity theft and fraud. Reputable e-commerce payment gateways are services that are expected to have safe, secure, and efficient processes for transmitting customers’ payment information to merchants’ banks. They serve as a vital bridge between buyers, merchants, and financial institutions. They significantly help to minimize shopping customers’ risks of becoming victims of prevalent cybercrimes by ensuring merchants work with payment gateways that meet the following requirements.

•Prove PCI DSS compliance (e.g., through a valid Report on Compliance/ROC or Attestation of Compliance/AoC).
•Implement robust fraud prevention technologies.
•Use encryption technology to safeguard sensitive information, including personal information and credit card numbers.
•Comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Open a Merchant Account

You can optimize your e-commerce payment method by opening a merchant account. This is a specialized type of bank account that allows your e-commerce website to accept digital payments, such as Mobile wallets, Debit and Credit cards. It serves as an intermediary financial account that temporarily “stores” a customer’s payment while the transaction is still pending and awaiting approval. Here is how it works.

If for instance you have a shopping customer who wishes to pay for a product/service you provide online using their credit card, once they’ve authorized the payment on their end, the funds won’t go directly from their credit card’s issuing bank or financial institution to your business bank account. Instead, the merchant account will place a temporary hold on the money, usually for one to three business days pending clearance. Once approved and cleared, the funds will then go from the merchant account to your business bank account.

What this means is that the primary function of merchant accounts is to verify the validity of online payments and transactions. The holding process allows the financial institutions involved to ensure there are adequate funds available in the payment method used (e.g., the credit card or debit card) and that the activity is legal and not fraudulent. 

Enhance the Security of Your E-Commerce Website

You may have secure payment methods but if your website itself is not secure, it can be easily compromised. This compromise can affect your customers’ sensitive information, your digital assets and information and payments made to your site. You can minimize the risk of such problems and their disastrous consequences by deliberately enhancing your website’s security measures. The most common method of doing so is by implementing SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption on the website. SSL is a type of security protocol designed to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access and “interceptors.” It works by encrypting digital information transmitted and shared by a web browser to a server and vice versa.

As part of the security of your e-commerce website, do not for any reason delay updating the software and plugins on the site. As much as practicable, you must automate the download and installation of app updates. This can help minimize the vulnerabilities and security risks posed by outdated programs. It helps too to consider implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) on your website. You can add it to the login procedure and payment processes. If you have MFA in place, your customers would need to provide more than just a password to log in to their accounts or finalize purchases. They would also need another way to authenticate their identity (e.g., via a password or PIN sent to their mobile phone numbers or email accounts). All these are added security hurdles to protect their transactions. It is always better to be secure online than to be sorry later.

Enable Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) on Your Website

Technically, DCC is a service that allows online shoppers to use their country’s currency when paying for purchases made on e-commerce stores based in another country. For convenience, most online international shoppers prefer paying in their local currencies. This is where DCC becomes hugely important in international e-commerce. If you enable DCC in your e-commerce website, your site’s customers will have an option to pay in their currency or that of the website’s “home” country at checkout. Most online shoppers prefer paying in their local currency because it eliminates the need for them to perform manual conversions. DCC does conversions automatically enabling shoppers to worry less about exchange rate fluctuations. So, with DCC in place on your website, you can give your customers simplified, more enjoyable experiences when buying products from your site online. That no doubt can engender trust in your business and make your customers really happy. Happy customers are more likely to return as repeat customers to give your business a boost. They help spread the word about your business to their friends, family and associates. This can be really great for the bottom line of your e-commerce business. 

Why Marketers Need a Secure Website

As cyber criminals become more and more sophisticated and daring, marketers are becoming wary and taking more precautions. The real focus now is on browsers and the features they display to assure users that the websites they are visiting are secure. That is where “hypertext transfer protocol secure” HTTPS has become something you cannot afford to ignore if you market online. For security reasons, marketers have placed a lot of focus on the move to HTTPS over the past few years. Google itself has taken note of that and has taken steps to give better recognition to HTTPS websites. Right now, some reports indicate that over 90% of pages listed on the first page of Google search results are secure. That gives marketers some bit of comfort and assurance about cyber security. Many web users are now well informed enough to, easily recognize the padlock icon on the top left corner of their browser as a sign that a website they have opened is properly secured. You can trust smart marketers. They are quickly latching on to that fact to promote their businesses. Here is what marketers can easily take advantage of right now.

Some browsers like Google Chrome usually notify users that a website isn’t secure. That leaves the user the clear option of taking the risk and continuing on the site or leaving the site as quickly as possible.

Websites using HTTPS load quicker and tend to rank higher particularly on Google.

Businesses that use HTTPS usually feature higher on Google SERPs than others.

If you market online through a self-storage website and it isn’t on HTTPS, you are missing a lot. Take urgent steps to get your business on HTTPS or you keep risking low patronage from lack of trust on the site. Taking your business on HTTPS confers many benefits associated with it including those earlier mentioned above.

You can set it up yourself if you know how. If not, you can request your web hosts to help out. It is relatively simple and straightforward. But, first you must acquire a Secure Sockets Layer, SSL certificate which you can get from service providers or Webmasters. The function of SSL is to prove that the website provider is exactly who it says it is and also attests to the fact that it is you who actually owns the website. This is a factual and reliable attestation no doubt and it helps to enhance trust and reliability needed in business. You may get some hosting providers who offer this service free within their control panels. You can check with your own hosts to be sure. Alternatively, if you so decide, you can use a service like “Let’s Encrypt” to get a free SSL certificate.

Securing your website against cyber criminals is one great way to enhance the credibility of your business and to attract more and better customers from cyberspace. Keep a keen eye on it and act appropriately.