Selecting the right merchant services package is a lot more important to your success than most people know when they first go into business. Without the right merchant account, you might not reliably receive payments, processing could fail to go through, or card providers could even reject the request for a transaction, depending on the situation. There are also a lot of domestic processors in countries around the world that dramatically limit the range of legal businesses they will provide services to, for reasons that are often unclear.
It’s quite common for provocative content creators and niche performance artists to need out of the box solutions to local perceptions of their business model, and international processing is one such resource. Other businesses that find themselves getting the cold shoulder from local processors can also benefit from an international account. Of course, there are a lot of other reasons why you might prefer to work with a processor based outside your home country.
International Processing for International Customers
Today’s digital businesses are finding more and more that achieving success means finding a way to work with customers from many countries, serving content to them and transacting payment through the currency of their home countries. International payment processors often take up support for those international currency conversions as part of their core processing agreement, allowing you to receive payment predictably in your home currency while providing online services and digital products to users around the world. That’s great for creatives, but it’s also great for software developers and other freelance professionals whose reputation has created global demand for services.
Processing for High-Risk Transactions
Some businesses with a primarily domestic customer base also opt for international payment processors for security reasons. Not only are international services more robustly designed when it comes to high-risk transactions, their agreements often come with chargeback protection provisions that help you address chargeback claims that are placed in error or for fraudulent purposes. Many traditional domestic processing agreements pass the risk of chargebacks onto client companies entirely without providing methods by which they can contest the claims and show proof services were provided. Protection against this kind of fraud is especially important for businesses who provide goods and services that are entirely digital, since reversing the delivery of digital content can be difficult for a number or reasons.
Tax Obligations and Offshore Processing
Domestic processing agreements often include taxes and other fees imposed by the countries in which you’re operating, and international processors operate in jurisdictions where these fees don’t apply, which can make them the cost-effective choice for many companies. They are also free of any obligations to deduct taxes automatically before passing payment on to you, which allows you versatility in your methods for receiving the funds. For companies with international holdings, it allows you to dictate the location of the account that will receive your funds when the merchant account releases them, so you control your tax liabilities and the timing of payments, allowing you to get more use out of your capital by avoiding overpayment and delayed refunds.
Is This Your First Merchant Account?
Many businesses start accepting electronic payment through a processor that uses a third-party merchant account like many mobile payment apps tend to do. Often, a merchant account agreement is a move to cut costs and scale the company after operations have been established, and learning the ins and outs of an enterprise credit card processing agreement can be difficult to do on your own. Instabill representatives work with businesses like yours every day, and you can even find answers to some of the most common questions we get from customers like you if you check out the FAQ section below.
Learn More About International Credit Card Processing
If you’re still not sure whether you should open an offshore merchant account for your business, it helps to learn more. Many companies that offer international services through forked websites also find it advantageous to negotiate independent processing for each storefront to get the best deals possible when dealing with different populations of customers. If you think a complex solution like that might be your best option, you’ll definitely want to talk to our representatives about your needs to get a comparative quote. You might also be surprised, often a single processing agreement can be tailored to use volume to your advantage, and you might find more savings than you expected.