When you sell to customers who live abroad, one thing is for certain: You need to find a secure and reliable way to accept foreign payments. In this increasingly competitive marketplace, your options when it comes to a payment provider are varied. This is true even if you want to avoid entrusting your global customers to the PayPal ecosphere.

What’s so bad about PayPal?

For many budding cross-border entrepreneurs, PayPal may seem like the only option to accept international payments. In many respects, it is a viable choice. After all, PayPal offers the following pluses:

• Easy to set up and use.
• Probably familiar to many of your customers.
• It can be used even if your customers don’t have a PayPal account.
• You can offer convenient options like recurring payments.
• It works with many popular shopping cart options.

However, along with the positives come some significant drawbacks …

• You will incur hefty fees for chargebacks. When you are doing business internationally, there is definitely a higher risk of these involuntary funds reversals that are initiated by your customer and that go directly through their bank, bypassing you in the process.
• PayPal can suspend your account at any time or for any reason, sometimes for months at a stretch. That can add up to costly interruptions for your ecommerce business.
• PayPal’s customer service department is sometimes difficult to contact and slow to respond.
• Some customers mistrust PayPal and refuse to use it.

If the cons of PayPal outweigh the pros for you and your business, don’t worry. You don’t need to use their platform to accept payments from foreign customers.

Foreign payments platform alternatives to PayPal.

Fortunately for you, there are many retailers who wish to pursue other options besides or in addition to PayPal, and the market has responded accordingly. As you go about deciding how to proceed, your best strategy is to look into some of the premier choices that are available to you:

Stripe. 

One of PayPal’s best-known competitors, Stripe offers merchants full payment integration, an interface that’s easy to use and fast transfers into your merchant account. Additionally, you can offer a variety of payment options, including Apple and Android Pay, cryptocurrency, credit and debit cards. Best of all, you will not have to pay additional fees for selling internationally.

Transferwise. 

Catering only to international sellers, this payment option offers payment transfers using real-time exchange rates. You can conduct transactions with customers from anywhere in the world, and you will get your funds quickly, usually within three days. The fees you will pay with Transferwise are minimal, usually about half of what your bank would charge. Furthermore, foreign exchange rates are quite low and are a much better bargain than what you would get with PayPal.

Google Wallet. 

Familiar to most people and free to use, Google Wallet is rapidly becoming the payment choice for many international sellers. This platform automatically transfers payments into your bank account, and customers can either use the web or a mobile app to pay. They don’t even need to have the wallet installed to use this platform.

Shopify. 

This payments option comes as part of the feature-rich Shopify ecommerce platform. It easily integrates with third-party apps and payment processors like Twitter and Pinterest and allows you to accept payments from Canada, the UK, and Australia without any additional fees.

Fondy. 

This payments platform lets you conduct business with customers in every country and accepts more than 100 different currencies. However, it is only available to sellers in the European Union. Because you can accept numerous types of payments with Fondy, you can appeal to a wide range of customer preferences, including internet and mobile banking, credit and debit cards, and even popular local options. With the platform’s focus on robust analytics and security, you can ensure that you not only know who your customers are but also that you can personalize their shopping experience to meet their preferences.

Amazon Payments. 

Unlike Shopify, Amazon Payments is not intrinsically linked to the Amazon ecosystem. Even so, your customers can submit their payments to you using their stored Amazon details. Because Amazon’s brand is known worldwide, this can foster an atmosphere of trust that will give your international customers peace of mind when it comes to sending money across borders. Best of all, they can make their payments in one easy click.

Payoneer. 

This integrated platform has a strong presence in the international payments marketplace. In most cases, you will get your international funds in minutes. You can even set up a “virtual bank account” that lets you receive payments in multiple currencies for easy withdrawal to your local bank account at any time. This platform features numerous ways for you to invoice and request payments, increasing the likelihood that you will get what you are owed promptly. Fees are fair and competitive, and you don’t need to pay a penny if funds are transferred from one Payoneer customer to another.

Inovio. 

With thirty years of experience in the field, Inovio is one of the most trusted of your options. The payment types we allow you to accept are numerous: credit and debit cards, echecks, and more. We even offer Multi-Currency Conversion with support for nearly every international currency imaginable — more than 175 in all! Want to maximize approval rates while saving on Interchange fees? You can even leverage the latest in military-grade tokenization to securely vault your international customers’ information for future use. 

Now that sellers are feeling free to expand their reach into foreign markets, vendors are stepping up to provide them with the multi-featured, secure funds acceptance options they need.

Factors to consider.

We get it: Searching for the best payment provider can seem quite daunting at first. Keep the following tips in mind when selecting a non-PayPal alternative:

• Read the fine print. As tedious as it might be to pore over all that legalese, you’ll thank yourself later. The last thing you want is to get stuck with hidden fees or burdensome charges that you could have avoided had you just been more diligent in the beginning.
• Take time to understand what you and your customers want. Not all providers offer every feature, and you may not need or want all the bells and whistles. In other words, match your requirements with the provider that can provide you with what you want and can grow with your business without saddling you with extras that will unnecessarily weigh down your budget.
• Make sure that the system you choose integrates well with the other apps you are using.

If you keep these suggestions in mind, your hunt for the best international payments provider can be both efficient and successful. Before you know it, you will be providing your valued foreign customers with the secure, easy, and personalized payments they deserve.