Quoting prices only in dollars often turns off many potential buyers. “If you are going to sell in the foreign market, your Web store has to look just like what is offered by the merchant down the street from the buyer,” says Tom DeLuca, senior vice president and project manager of Planet Payment, a firm that provides currency conversion services for Web-base and traditional commerce. “As part of that, you have to offer your services in their language and in their currency.”

While most U.S. Web merchants originally priced their products and services only in dollars, in recent years, many have been listing a number of foreign currencies as well. But in most cases, these prices do not use up-to-date conversion numbers and they do not include additional fees tacked on during the conversion.

More recently, however, some merchants have been using dynamic currency conversion services that quote prices to consumers that reflect up-to-the minute currency rates and include all the fees a customer is likely to pay. Then, if a customer clicks a buy button, the price quoted is the prices he or she will actually pay.

But not all foreign payment issues on the Web relate directly to currency conversion. Many U.S. retailers fail to acknowledge that while credit card payment is prevalent in the U.S., it is not as popular with the mass market elsewhere in the world.

Irvine, Calif.-based Payments Partners, for example, has developed a service to facilitate online international payments involving electronic funds transfer not associated with a card. “We know from talking to retailers there is a huge demand for U.S. goods and services by customers who are not paying with credit cards,” says Greg Bjorndahl, Payment Partners CEO. “Millions of dollars in sales are lost by U.S. companies selling online because they can’t take these payments. About 30 percent of the viewers on the large U.S.-based online retail sites are non-U.S. eyeballs and many retailers can’t even sell to them.”

In addition to electronic funds transfer, many Europeans still buy through the Internet using old-fashioned cash-on-delivery (COD) payments. Yet, most U.S. retailers will not take the risk associated with shipping goods to a foreign customer without the payment in hand.

To facilitate customers who want COD, Payment Partners is forming relationships with major international delivery services to allow consumers to prepay the delivery companies. Payment Partners then transfers the payment from the delivery service to the retailer. “Their problem is that most foreign customers don’t want to send money to retailers they’re not familiar with. They know these delivery services and trust that they will deliver their goods,” Bjorndahl says. He adds that the firm will be announcing partnerships with the delivery services soon but declines to reveal who they are.

Copyright 2003 The Electronic Transaction Association