Maximize Revenue: Mastering Subscription Payments in Latin America

With Latin music dominating one in five tracks on Spotify’s Top 100, it’s clear that the region has rhythm. Like Bad Bunny and Shakira, Spotify has succeeded by tapping into the Latin market. The region now contributes over 20% of its active users.

But Latin America offers more than just catchy tunes; it presents a strategic opportunity for expansion. With a remarkable 78% digital commerce penetration and a large base of digitally savvy consumers, the region is poised for growth. And just like Spotify, your business can thrive in this market by embracing global partnerships.

Whether you already have customers in LatAm or are considering expanding into the region, providing them with a localized payment experience is crucial. 

Moreover, the effectiveness of your payment strategy directly impacts your team’s efficiency, payment processing costs, authorization (payment acceptance) rates, and more. 

Let’s explore how Chargebee can assist you in these aspects and strengthen your payment strategy for LatAm:

1. Collect payments without a local entity

Chargebee’s integration with leading gateways like EBANX and dLocal allows you to accept payments in local currencies (such as Brazilian Real and Mexican Peso) without a LatAm business entity. This eliminates all the complexities and expenses of establishing and maintaining a regional office.

Bonus tip: With Chargebee’s Smart Routing, you can set rules to automatically route payments in Latin American currencies (like the Brazilian Real) through a local provider and use your existing gateway for USD payments. 

2. Price in local currencies

Localizing price points is essential to earning the trust and confidence of Latin American consumers. You can increase your competitiveness and appeal to a broader audience by tailoring prices to match the local expectations and purchasing power. 

Chargbeee’s Product Catalog helps sell your subscription plans and add-ons in multiple currencies. You can also choose automatic exchange rate conversion for accurate reporting.

3. Improve checkout conversion

A seamless checkout experience is key to converting your potential customers into paying subscribers. Chargebee’s multi-lingual support and integration with 30+ payment gateways ensure a frictionless checkout process for your Latin American customers. 

SA International (SAi), the US-based design-to-production software, saw a massive opportunity in the Brazilian market and consulted us to streamline their billing and payment workflows.

“In regions where international credit cards are not as common, providing payment gateways and methods that enable our customers to pay in their local currencies is crucial. Chargebee offered solutions for our expansion into Brazil and India. In just 1-2 hours, we were up and running after a few tests! Knowing that Chargebee partners with over 30 payment gateways makes it easier to get our products to customers worldwide and grow internationally,”

-Rick Marden, CFO of SAi.

Bonus tip: Customizing checkout screens in Spanish or Portuguese and supporting popular local payment methods like Boleto can increase conversion rates and reduce cart abandonment rates. 

4. Expand market coverage

Chargebbe’s EBANX and dLocal integrations support popular local card networks such as Elo, Hipercard, CMR Falabella, Argencard, and Cenco and global ones like Visa and Mastercard. This increases your market coverage and regional presence.

5. Achieve optimal authorization rate

A key benefit of partnering with EBANX and dLocal payment gateways is the ability to process customer payments locally in Latin America rather than as cross-border transactions. 

This is important because your payment acceptance rate (or authorization rate) can be lower for cross-border transactions due to several reasons. A domestic processor can achieve higher payment authorization rates and minimize payment failures. 

6. Save cross-border transaction fee

Processing payments locally saves the processing fee, which is additionally levied on international payments. This is a massive win at scale, enabling you to reinvest resources into further growth initiatives.

7. Recover failed payments

Failed payments can lead to revenue loss and customer dissatisfaction if not addressed on time. Chargebee’s robust dunning mechanism automatically re-attempts payment collection on failed payments at specific intervals. 

This helps you recover the money without manual operations. It also sends prompt notifications to your customers so they’re in the loop and can take the right action throughout the process.

Conclusion

Expanding into the Latin American market presents a significant opportunity for SaaS and subscription businesses. But, navigating the local payment preferences and infrastructure can be a challenge. 

By partnering with Chargebee and leveraging its integrations with EBANX, dLocal, and other major payment gateways, you can streamline your payments strategy, provide a better customer experience, and drive efficient growth in Latin America.

Ready to harness the power of subscription billing and management to drive revenue growth for your subscription business?

Get a demo now