Why cross-border e-commerce is tougher than most business owners think

MarketWatch: 63% of U.S. retailers have customers shopping online from another country. But selling abroad can be more complicated than most business owners realize.

63% of the US retailers have folks shopping outside of the US.

And on the flip side of that, 42% of the American shoppers are shopping outside of the US.

If a merchant isn't prepared for cross-border commerce, they're really going to miss out on some amazing growth opportunities.

So one of the rising trends in e-commerce is selling what we call cross-border. And cross-border means actually selling across borders.

From a merchant's point of view, some of the challenges are getting the platform correct on Payments, Duties and Taxes, Shipping of the goods, and making sure Fraud is in check.

Well, first of all, you have many banks around the world that are issuing different cards.

And when you take different cards that are issued in different countries and you try to send them cross-border, a lot of times the bank that's accepting that card is uncomfortable with the card being issued, let's say in Germany or South Africa.

The payment provider needs to be aware of this and needs to work with the merchant to make sure you set the right rules to be able to accept those payments. We call that payment acceptance.

The other thing that happens is, when you're selling cross-border, every country has sort of their own PayPal, their own payment method.

And coming from America, we may not understand the importance of that in selling or accepting those payments for the shoppers.

For example, in the Netherlands there's a payment type called iDEAL.

So if you're going to sell in the Netherlands and you don't have that payment type offered, there's a good chance you're going to miss the market.

So one of the other important things is when you're shipping cross-border is you need to make sure that you're respectful and you're obeying the local duties and laws around taxes.

The United States just put in a new online tax regulation called the Wayfair Act that now states and counties are actually going to charge taxes for things that are shipped within and out of their borders.

Well, the same thing holds true internationally. You can't be shipping goods in and out of countries without following their provisions.

25% of the world is shopping online. You're going to see a lot more artificial intelligence driven by business intelligence.

So a lot more data and a lot more information is going to be there for merchants to make decisions on shipping those goods to their shoppers.

So the process is just going to get more and more frictionless and it's boundaryless for everybody that's buying and selling overseas.