Anyone running an online offer knows that its important to know your customer, so when marketing an offer globally you need to be very aware of what form and how many currencies you accept as this will play an important role in your success. If you are just marketing an offer in the US, then its easy – just accept USD. What if you are marketing in US and Canada? Or, what if (like a lot of marketers are doing these days) marketing completely outside of the US?
I know a lot of merchants who have found great success in places like South America, Europe and Australia. Right now, traffic is cheaper in those areas for certain verticals and these guys are taking advantage of that. But lets say the marketer is in the US, and their offer is based in Australia. Will accepting USD hurt conversions? You can look at getting an AUD account, but getting that from a bank in Australia is very tough. There are some decent offshore options, but they really only like guys with History. So, one option is to get a Domestic account, but show the price in AUD and tell your customer that they will be charged in USD. The key here is to make sure that you never charge MORE because of the currency exchange. Also, you want to let the customer know as much as possible that the charge will be in USD and to expect that on their credit card. You may or may not be familiar with Dynamic Currency Conversion, this is something that might be used to help but is currently frowned on by the associations or so I am told. I will speak to this exact topic in another post.
Europe is a much easier to work with because securing a merchant account in either EURO of GBP is pretty easy. Its also pretty quick and easy to setup a EU corp which will be a requirement of working with the EU acquirer (direct MIDS not agg solutions). Although some marketers price and charge in USD, even in Europe, I think a much better strategy is to charge in the local currency. I think the behaviour of the consumer in those areas is different then lets say in Canada (where customers are used to buying in USD on website) and your conversions will be better if you have the local currency. One other very important thing to note about Europe is the importance of Alternative and Local Payments options. This is extremely popular there and by not considering this you are missing out on a huge opportunity.
The one area of the world that I am getting the most requests from is South America. Marketers are running straight sale offers down there and doing very well, but they need the local currencies as they will not purchase in USD. This is something we are currently working on and I hope to have a solution very soon.
If you are interested in setting up a multi currency account OR just have questions about processing for global offers, please do not hesitate to contact me.
JR