Challenges in cross-border ecommerce for merchants

Your company was founded four years ago, in a market of PSPs and online gateway solutions that becomes more and more competitive as years go by. How does your company manage to stand out in the crowd?

I guess Apple were asked the same question when they decided to create telephones. We are not just a PSP; we are a payments company with a unique back-office that provides merchants with an easy way to manage their payments. Having a gateway with 250 solutions, over 40 acquirers, fraud solutions etc. is awesome, but there are similar things out there in the market. However, none has focused on providing the tools for big corporates in order to manage payments in an easy way, without depending on a technical team.

We have patented technology that enables the Payment Managers, CFOs, CEOs to decide which are the things they want to do and when they want to get them done. This is unique and disruptive. We have focused on making difficult, costly, and long technical processes easy, by just dragging boxes joining arrows. We save development time and increase revenues.

What are the payment challenges in cross-border ecommerce and how can companies get past them? What are some of the challenges businesses face when taking their online stores global?

There are many challenges: reconciliation, API integration, cash-based payment solution etc. We tend to believe that all the countries have the same buying habits and they use the same payment methods, but this is wrong. We also think that one acquirer is enough to process transactions from any region; this is a misconception as well. Therefore, we may say that there are more challenges, not just one; but with the right partner, merchants are able to overcome them and keep up with a constantly changing industry.

Merchants selling in multiple geographies, working with multiple acquirers, and offering multiple payment methods tend to struggle with having access to insightful and actionable data. What is causing this issue and how can it be solved?

The main issue is that the data is going through different platforms. You mentioned before that there is a lot of competition out there, which is true. This competition is from the gateway service point of view. However, from the technological point of view, there aren’t more than 10 to 15 real gateways out there. The rest are white labels and normally old technology, which do not share the same platform for all the data, this making it really difficult for the merchant to have access to this data and act on it. We built our platform 100% thinking about these types of issues that more and more companies have today.

Another issue they have is that many gateways declare themselves as omnichannel; however, the information goes through different platforms, so no merchant can use this data to improve the customer’s buying experience.

What is the impact of PSD2 on the way Easy Payment Gateway manages fraud for its merchants?

For us, it will not be a significant change, because we provide the tools for our merchants to manage fraud as they wish. No company is the same; they have a different appetite for risk, different customer profiles etc. This is the reason why we provide all the tools that will adapt to any fraud policy.

How do payment needs vary across different sizes of merchants and how does Easy Payment Gateway accommodate them?

From small to medium-sized merchants, you need to provide them with a very easy control panel, because normally they don’t have a payment expert or complex international customers. Therefore, we provide what we call a “DIY” product, thus the merchants are able to choose what they want.

For international companies, we provide full control and flexibility; everything can be modified to adapt to each organisation. Corporates need this type of control to improve processes, reduce fees and costs, increase revenues, etc. This is our core product.

What is next for Easy Payment Gateway? How are you planning to develop and expand in the coming years?

The DIY is coming out to the market in November 2018 and it will be focused on small and medium-sized companies. Moreover, the omnichannel solution is ready and we are starting a proof of concept in November as well. At the beginning of 2019, we will be presenting our new back office, which will be huge for us, presenting our new product after two years of work.

This editorial was first published in our Payments and Commerce Market Guide 2018-2019. The Guide presents the key trends and developments in global and regional payment methods by highlighting the innovation, challenges, and developments in the use of the most important payment methods across geographies and verticals.

About Jose Manuel Peral Cortes

Jose Manuel Peral is COO of Easy Payment Gateway since the company started. He developed his career in different consultancy companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers or Grant Thornton. He has a Master’s Degree in Tax Planning and an MBA degree. Before Easy Payment Gateway he founded and was involved in other projects.

About Easy Payment Gateway

Easy Payment Gateway started trading in 2015, with the vision and the goal of making payments easy for big corporates that need flexibility and complex payment logic. Once merchants integrate into their system, the technical team of the merchant doesn’t need to do anything else. They provide speed to market, revenue increase and cost savings, the next generation of payment platforms.