How To Make Your Online Business Grow By Accepting Additional Methods Of Payment

There was a great story and discussion on several of the national TV news stations over the past few days about a Pizza delivery restaurant in the US which accepts the Mexican Peso as payment for deliveries. Much of the ‘US’ side of the discussion was directed at why an American company was accepting the Mexican Peso currency and not the almighty USD. You would have laughed out loud if you heard these news people trying to make the point, “if you are in the US your company should only accept US dollars.” You would have thought David Duke was behind the original story.
The bottom line to their ‘Peso Payment’ policy was …”if it will expand our business and we are meeting a demand, we will supply that demand and grow.” Who wouldn’t? If you are lucky enough to find that niche market and it works — your business deserves an award NOT a debate.

The same payment principle of the ‘Peso Pizza’ applies to online companies. (try and say that again three times real fast) When you start an e-commerce web, your first expansion in ‘methods of payment’ is usually to accept credit cards. It is estimated that 90% of the e-commerce transactions are still completed by credit card, Visa and MasterCard. If you want to create more sales, you begin accepting the type of money people have to pay and credit cards are right on top. Whether you are willing take the time, money and risk to get your business a real merchant account or whether you find a third party to accept them like PayPal, that will be your first step to online sales growth.

But when does that credit card growth level out? At what point in your business would accepting other forms of online payment, make your sales expand further? In other words, when did the ‘Peso Pizza’ delivery realize that there was a demand to pay with Peso and not the USD?
Adding more methods of payment is just like translating your web site into a foreign language. You have to ask yourself, would more people shop there if your web was entirely in Spanish or Chinese?

Would more people shop there if your business accepted other forms of payment. According to Forrester Research, many European customers still use offline payment methods to make online purchases. Accepting credit cards is great, but will only take your business so far….

When is it worth expanding your online methods of payment to capture additional business?

Take a look at your target market and we can use the ‘Peso Pizza’ as an example. The delivery restaurant, with more than 50 locations, had all of their stores in States near the Mexican/US border (not surprising) where the population was visiting Mexico often and returning with extra Pesos. Arizona, Texas, California are all examples of his target territory.

The management of the ‘Peso Pizza’ restaurant is not going to open any stores in the Northern Unites States. The pizza eaters in that area most likely not have never even seen a Peso before…so ask yourself, if you had direct deposit for Euro bank accounts as a payment method would your product sell more products to Europeans?

There are literally dozens and dozens of additional methods of accepting payments online which you could add to your web business. What is your target audience and who would purchase these items? If you are in the US and find that many Europeans may be interested in your products, you may want to add IBAN as a method of payment. This just means setting up a European bank account, then its very easy for anyone to send payments to you via IBAN. IBAN is similar to a the SWIFT payment system which US banks use for ‘Bank Wires’.

Would it be helpful for you to accept online debit payments which is an easy type of online billpay direct from client’s online bank accounts? Many companies like UseMyBank.com accept online debit payments and pay you directly. By adding them as a payment method you can immediately expand your sales market to another 11 million online banking consumers outside the US. In fact why are you not already accepting this type of payment? Never heard of it before? Someone told you that accepting credit cards was the only way to make a payment online?

This type of expansion can double or triple your marketplace with a few easy moves. US companies such as FXSource will set up your online operation with the ability to accept local payments in over two dozen countries around the globe. They accept the foreign local payment in that local currency, exchange it to USD and transfer the payment to your US account via ACH. Its simple, fast and very cost effective. After adding them, anyone in France can make a payment to you via their local bank account bill pay. Again, instant market expansion.

Using such a service is easily incorporated into your existing web or shopping cart and instantly you will be expanding your sales market around the globe. You have to find out….”will my product sell in this market” and make your methods of payment cater to that target audience. Its not that difficult to aggressively expand into the global market by adding additional methods of payment.

Certain online payment systems are less well know and more geographic specific, such as Webmoney. WM is Russian but has agents in over 40 countries around the globe, so if you have a product which may sell in Russia, adding this method of payment would greatly expand your market.

Operating online today online means expanding your business beyond any geographic borders and you must be keenly aware of other countries and target markets that may be available. Even accepting credit cards from such Central American countries such as Costa Rica may be impossible in the US just because of most online fraud authorization methods. Payment cards work differently in Central and South America. Make sure you are not excluding any markets by limiting your methods of payment. Countries such as Viet Nam, China and Germany are prime examples of online markets you can gain by adding additional methods of payment including digital currency. Despite what people will tell you, ‘credit cards’ are not the answer to all your online sales questions.
Here are a few methods of pay which are easy to add and could make your online business grow overnight. Remember the world outside your neighborhood, may not run on plastic, keep an open mind. *reference Gold-pages.net

• http://www.fxsource.com/ (Global in
• http://www.usemybank.com/ (Canada online payments)
• http://www.actecash.com/ (get clients from Brazil, Canada & Mexico)
• http://www.billtobill.com.cn/en/ (China)
• http://www.click2pay.com/en/ (Over 170 countries)
• http://www.earthport.com/
• http://www.ecashdirect.net/
• http://www.ecatalystone.com/