You have an online shop or make international sales over the internet. In doing so, do you have any idea how many nationalities you sell to? There are most likely many more than just the Dutch, but are you facilitating them with the payment method that is easiest for them?
iDEAL may be commonplace for us in the Netherlands, but many countries have their own trusted payment methods. Expanding your payment methods for foreign customers is easier than you think!
Counterparts iDEAL
We have iDEAL, Belgium has Bancontact, Germany has Giropay, France has Carte Bleu… And if you zoom out a little further, you will see that the payment methods are crystallising into a number of smaller parties in each country. Indeed, it is far from everywhere like in the Netherlands, where 70 per cent of all transactions are done via iDEAL. In no country has one payment method become as popular as in our country. It is therefore too simplistic a reasoning if, as an online merchant, you think you can do it with Visa, Maestro and MasterCard in addition to iDEAL for foreign customers, possibly supplemented by PayPal.
Unused opportunities
Still too often people think like this, and that’s a shame. Because why else would you translate your website into French, German or English? You want to reach your international customers – so why not serve them as well as possible? And you do that by offering customers familiar and local payment methods. Especially if you look at the figures, it becomes clear that precisely these payment methods can benefit your sales, and at lower rates than credit cards and PayPal! It is therefore better to offer Giropay, Bancontact, Sofort and Klarna for international customers.
How do you facilitate that?
But how do you apply for these foreign payment methods? We hear you thinking: open a foreign bank account, apply to a bank there, conclude contracts and then get payments in via 40 different channels… Ingenico, however, takes all these worries off your hands. B2U helps you apply for a single collecting contract for both iDEAL and the desired foreign payment methods. In the background, Ingenico will conclude all the necessary contracts for you and pay you out. This way, you receive all incoming payments in one go only once a day. Ingenico even takes care of the reporting for you!
