Last editedJun 20232 min read
With the rise of ecommerce, purchases are made on all 7 continents of the globe. With both the internet and e-businesses operating in an increasingly borderless, international fashion, it’s only natural that payment methods follow suit by offering local currency payments to foreign buyers.
If you own an e-commerce business and are looking to attract international clientele, supporting multiple currencies can be a great way to optimise revenue. In this post, we’ll take you through the various advantages of accepting different currencies, as well as a guide to the payment solutions that can help you streamline the process.
Advantages of accepting local currency payments
1. Increase customer conversion rates
Customers visiting a merchant’s site can easily be put off by seeing items priced in a currency they don’t use or recognise. Occasionally, they might even fill their basket, but abandon the purchase at checkout when they see that they are expected to make the payment in a foreign currency. Allowing customers to view product prices and pay in their local currency, therefore, can help increase customer conversion rates on your website.
2. Reduce charges for customers
Offering multi-currency payment options will prevent customers being charged extra currency conversion fees on their end. Customers that see these extra charges crop up on their bank statement are unlikely to want to shop on your site in the future, meaning you can lose out on potential repeat customers.
3. Pleasing pricing display
A consistent and pleasing pricing display is important when it comes to attracting and retaining customers. With no multi-currency set-up, you might end up with prices appearing in multiple decimal places when converted. For example, a product priced at 20 GBP may appear as 23.78 when displayed in euros. There’s nothing strictly wrong with this, but it just doesn’t look appealing. Rounding the figure up to 24 EUR so it reads as the whole number looks far better. Multi-currency will automatically do this rounding for you, keeping your pricing display simple and professional.
4. Improve customer loyalty rates
While attracting customer loyalty depends on a number of factors, accepting multi-currency payments can certainly help provide your international customers with a more positive buying experience. This is because of the enhanced transparency and familiarity of pricing, plus the evasion of any extra conversion charges.
How to enable multi-currency payments
The best way to set up multiple currency payment options is through using an ecommerce platform which offers this as an option. An ecommerce platform is essentially a software application for managing online business, from storefront to sales. Examples of ecommerce platforms which support multiple currency payments are Shopify and BigCommerce.
GoCardless also offers great options for collecting international payments from customers.
GC enables businesses to receive international payments from 30+ countries at the real exchange rate — i.e. the current price customers pay to buy a foreign product using their home currency. It does this by offering a local bank debit option in each of the supported countries. This means that customers pay in their local currency, while merchants receive the funds in their own local currency, without any need for foreign bank accounts.
GC offers competitive transaction fees, with no hidden pricing or commission in the exchange rate. GC also uses Wise to update and confirm the real exchange rate ensuring customers get the best possible rate on currency conversion. See full pricing details here.
We can help
GoCardless helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of admin your team needs to deal with when chasing invoices. Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.
