Growing your business in today’s world takes a whole lot more than it did a decade ago. This is almost entirely thanks to how the internet has expanded business opportunities and potential customer base. Now, businesses can look far beyond their region and even borders, to serve clients who value their products and services across the globe. One of the key enablers of this change is the technology behind online payments.
With online payments, things like currency conversion and cross-global purchasing are simpler than ever. However, this simplicity does come at a cost. Aside from the financial aspect, it takes longer to get your business operations up and running. So, while technology solutions have grown exponentially to enable this shift, your technological capabilities aren’t the only things you’ll have to consider when scaling globally.
Enabling international business means dealing with different regulations, economic scenarios, payment providers and structures, as well as cultural differences. Now, technology can certainly help in some of these areas but doesn’t solve every issue faced.
Instead, businesses need to consider how their service scales alongside their technological capabilities. We’re going to explore the possible issues you could come across, some solutions and give you a bit of insight into what you’re facing. Afterall, we’re pretty experienced on the subject.
Global Scaling Challenges
In one of our previous articles we’ve already explored the challenges faced when globally scaling but here we’re going into a bit more depth.
Some issues you may face are:
- Costs.
- New regulatory environments.
- Unfamiliar economic influences.
- Cross-border e-commerce.
- Payment structures growing to meet demands.
- Cultural differences.
Costs
As with any aspect of growth, you’ll incur new costs. Increasing the amount of product, opening new product lines, and upgrading your technology to accommodate these new needs will all increase your financial burden, to some degree.
New Regulatory Environments
The regulations that govern your home region will most likely differ from those in another country. Scaling properly means being able to recognize these differences and prepare for them before you expand your business. You don’t want to be caught out unaware and have to halt expansion due to unforeseen yet preventable issues.
Unfamiliar Economic Influences
In addition to regulations, there may be other unseen economic influences that make doing business in other regions more complex. For example, perhaps certain products simply aren’t suited to some regions due to average income levels! At points like this, it would be helpful to have advisors who may have more insight into the markets you’re looking to expand into. They’ll be able to step in and advise you about the best way forward to ensure a seamless launch.
Cross-Border e-Commerce
Operating across borders will introduce new trade requirements that you’ll likely be unfamiliar with. It’ll also require you to develop and create new relationships with localized PSPs. Creating these relationships and cultivating them to a point that you’re happy with takes a huge amount of time. Now, we know that time is money so, getting everything set-up will likely increase your costs even more. It’d be advisable to have a partner well versed in creating these relationships, or better yet, to give you access to already existing ones – leaving you to focus on other areas of the business.
Payment Structures for Increased Demand
One area where technology is needed is when you’re scaling your payment structure to meet demand. If you’ve grown enough to accommodate international business, then you’ll likely have more customers from more places than ever before. Your payment structure needs to be flexible and robust enough to serve these increasing customers without declining in quality. You’ll need a cashier that can be integrated into your website that doesn’t slow down overall function while giving access to more payment methods.
Cultural Differences
When it comes to dealing with different cultures as you expand, you should expect cultural differences to rear their head every now and then. Whether that means how your products are presented, distribution channels used, marketing efforts or which payment methods are most popular in a certain region – you should have an adviser that understands these differences. And then makes your handling of them as smooth as possible.
Don’t Face These Challenges Alone
Here at Praxis, our entire mission is to enable our partners to accomplish their scaling goals with as little hassle as possible. Afterall, it’s in our own best interests to help you succeed! Our experience has enabled us to understand the challenges that come with global expansion, and our payments solutions allow us to position our partners in the most effective way to handle them. We can orchestrate payments and control payment flows in a way that not only improves the experience for your customers but will positively impact your revenue as well.
Our dedicated account managers provide personal insight into the markets that you want to expand into and how best to handle that scaling. We’ll guide you according to your own unique growth strategy, using our extensive experience in payments across the globe. Our large customer base has allowed us to understand the unique steps that will be required to not only succeed but to excel.
New markets require you to deal with new banking networks and payment providers, as well as the regulations we mentioned earlier. However, our support helps address these issues, with seamless integration to give you access to 490+ PSPs and over 1000 APMs.
But you don’t just have to take our word for it, you can request a demo today. Get a glimpse into how Praxis can be an invaluable partner for your global expansion and business scaling needs. With this new era of business, to stay competitive and ensure your business can achieve sustained growth, you need to look towards global scaling. We understand this process can be frightening, but rest assured, Praxis will be there to help guide you.
