Maximizing Global Growth: The Advantages of Multiple Payment Gateway Partnerships

Online payments have become an integral part of business transactions, so much so that deciding the payment strategy is one of the top items on businesses’ checklists when expanding to new regions.

When you already work with a Payment Service Provider (or ‘payment gateway’ as it is commonly called) that is reliable, secure, and works fine for your current markets, it may seem overkill to even consider adding another one. Even if a popular payment method in your potential market is not supported, you’d prefer to wait for your current payment gateway to develop than work with one more vendor.

But, partnering with multiple gateways helps you go beyond payment method coverage. Here are six key reasons why you should consider a multi-payment gateway strategy for your global expansion plans.

Benefits of using multiple payment gateways

1. Expand to new markets faster

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, your business’s agility in finding the right opportunities and launching in the market is key to success. When expanding to new markets, you should be able to accept online payments in those regions. If your current payment gateway doesn’t support a region you’re targeting, it shouldn’t slow down your expansion plans. By collaborating with other gateways specializing in those markets, you can fast-track your expansion plans and reduce your Go-to-market time.

2. Offer flexible payment methods

When entering new regions, localizing your subscribers’ experience is crucial in earning their trust. This involves billing and collecting payments in local currencies and offering their preferred payment methods.

While cards continue to be a standard payment method in most regions, the rise of Alternative Payment Methods (APMs) — such as BACS (UK), UPI (India), iDEAL (The Netherlands), and Boleto (Brazil) — is evident and cannot be overlooked. Research suggests that 85% of US merchants plan to accept new APMs in the next one to three years.

A single payment gateway may not cover all the popular payment methods in the regions you operate in. By partnering with multiple gateways, you can provide your customers with the most convenient payment options, which leads to higher conversion rates and reduced cart abandonment. Chargebee supports 30+ major payment gateways worldwide.

3. Improve authorization rates

Globally popular payment gateways certainly offer a broad reach and global coverage. However, the local providers often have deeper expertise in specific regions, which you can use to your advantage.

For example, when you partner with a Latin American provider like EBANX or dLocal, your customer payments will be processed with domestic card schemes (such as Elo and Hipercard) and treated as domestic transactions instead of cross-border transactions. These factors can increase your authorization (payment acceptance) rates.

4. Streamline finance operations

Relying on a single payment gateway that doesn’t support all popular payment methods in your target markets can lead to inefficiencies in your financial operations.

Because when you don’t offer payment methods that they are used to, your customers are forced to use manual (offline) payment methods like wire transfers. This creates delays and increases your business’s outstanding receivables.

Consider the case of Xentral, a Germany-based ERP. 60% of its subscriber base paid using invoice-based payments, which led to many process inefficiencies and hindered its growth ambitions. By partnering with Stripe and Mollie payment gateways via Chargebee, they moved 90% of those subscriptions from offline to online payments. This resulted in an 80% reduction in outstanding receivables within just five months and improved their cash flow.

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We recognize that plugging a new payment gateway into your existing billing and payment workflows requires change management to avoid any disruption to existing payments. Chargebee’s team of experts can assist in navigating this process, ensuring a smooth transition without impacting your customers’ checkout or renewal experiences.

5. Reduce costs

Transaction fees vary depending on the payment gateway, payment method, and region. For instance, direct debit payment methods typically incur lower transaction fees when compared to credit cards. However, credit cards may be more prevalent in some markets. Understanding these dynamics can help you plan for optimal cost-reduction strategies.

NLZIET, a Dutch streaming service, saw a significant increase in authorization rates (reaching +98%) after transitioning to Adyen. This seamless integration with Chargebee and Adyen‘s smart retry technology reduced revenue loss and improved its cost efficiency.

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6. Mitigate risk

Payments are the lifeblood of your business. Any downtime or issues with your single payment gateway directly impact your signups, renewals, and revenue.

Similarly, if the payment gateway blocks or temporarily holds your merchant account, it could take weeks to resolve the issue or find a suitable alternative and get back on track, which could impair your cash flow.

A multi-payment gateway strategy minimizes this risk. If one gateway experiences an outage, you will have a backup to ensure continued operation.

While evaluating Chargebee, Study.com wanted the ability to connect with multiple gateways. “Chargebee offered the flexibility to provide multiple payment options, which helped us acquire a more diverse customer base,” said Voitek Sobieszczanski, its VP of Finance.

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Final thoughts on multiple payment gateway partnerships

While a single payment gateway might seem sufficient initially, a billing strategy that leverages multiple payment gateways offers a lot of advantages for your global business. It empowers you to provide a localized payment experience for your customers, streamline finance operations, save costs, achieve better authorization rates, and mitigate risk.

This translates to a smoother global expansion, allowing you to focus on growing your business without worrying about payment roadblocks.

At Chargebee, we understand the complexities of managing subscriptions for a global audience. That’s why we integrate seamlessly with 30+ leading payment gateways, such as Adyen, Checkout.com, GoCardless, PayPal, and Stripe, which offer 20+ payment methods. This helps you provide a localized payment experience for your customers, no matter where they are. Plus, Chargebee’s smart payment routing ensures you choose the most efficient gateway for each transaction, saving you time and money.

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

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