The Green Sheet Online Edition
August 11, 2025 • 25:08:01
Street Smarts
Stop missing out on cross-border payments
Who's processing cross-border payments currently? Shopify, Stripe, Ayden, Checkout, and the latter two are new to the U.S. market. These providers do it all in one service, using smart payment routing to enable consumers to pay in their preferred local currencies. ISOs need to build these capabilities in a hurry because these companies are eating our lunch.
At a time when anyone with a merchant account can sell to anyone anywhere in the world, it's high time that ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs) get into the cross-border game. With better technology, we can control our destiny and create a more level playing field.
Stop outsourcing
Outsourcing doesn't work. I have not found a cross-border service provider that will pay more than 25 percent on the whole merchant account. MLSs are losing on these accounts, and it's hard to get merchants that do a lot of international payments to switch from Stripe and other market-leading providers.
Outsourcing is clunky. Bolting on a third-party service provider and requiring merchants to toggle between local and international processing accounts and apps is not ideal. It reminds me of the old mail order/telephone order (MO/TO) days when merchants used separate accounts and devices to process MO/TO transactions.
Stop multiple
Stripe and other companies give customers a single merchant ID to process local and international payments. We need to do the same. Intelligent routing technologies would enable us to create a single merchant ID for all transactions. These technologies use algorithms, data and AI that run in the background, directing each transaction to the best possible payment processor, gateway or acquiring bank.
Smart routing capabilities dynamically assess transactions by amount, currency, location, card type, issuer bank behavior, regulatory environments, degree of risk and per-transaction fees. All of this happens instantly and invisibly, creating a better experience for everyone in the chain, from processor and acquirer to merchant and consumer.
Stop losing chargebacks
No merchant should be afraid of accepting foreign credit cards in the 21st century; we need to do a better job of helping them manage risk. The card brands have always said we're in a global economy, but they don't treat chargebacks that way. If a U.S. merchant accepts a card from another country and the cardholder initiates a chargeback, there is a zero to one percent chance of that merchant recovering the funds.
I had a merchant sell $20,000 of makeup to a company in Japan, and the company claimed it never received the package. My merchant had proof of delivery. It didn't matter. The chargeback went through anyway, and that was that. I've seen this happen again and again, especially here in South Florida where international tourists buy things in person, which are not as easy to charge back as ecommerce and key-entered transactions, but that doesn't stop them from trying.
Stop wasting time
With more players coming into the U.S. market, ISOs need to figure out intelligent routing for international payments. Time is of the essence. We can't sit back anymore and watch these companies take away all that business.
Agents, stop sitting around and waiting for the international option to be available. We can't sell what we don't have, and we're losing too many sales. Send emails, bring it up at meetings and show management the deals you are losing.
ISOs, stop treating international payments as a solution for large-volume merchants. Shopify, Stripe, Ayden and Checkout certainly don't see it that way. They offer simple, single-account payment processing to all clients, including mom-and-pop stores.
Let's end the restrictions, elitism and dual-merchant-number madness and make international payments available to U.S. ISOs, MLSs, merchants and consumers. Let's solve this issue once and for all.
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Allen Kopelman, a serial entrepreneur, is co-founder and CEO of Nationwide Payment Systems Inc. and host of B2B Vault: The Biz to Biz podcast. Email him at allen@npsbank.com and connect on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenkopelman/ and Twitter @AllenKopelman.
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