PayPal Makes Back To School Easy For Merchants, With A Global Twist

PayPal’s new PassPort global portal is designed to connect local merchants with customers around the world—and it’s especially applicable to back-to-school retailing, according to Payment Week.

Case in point: A merchant who has just ended a website sale on back-to-school knapsacks in one market could, instead of returning to business as usual, start a new sale that’s aimed at a different nationality whose school year has a different start date. For some products, that could apply even better to the six-month shift in seasons on the opposite side of the world.

To make those opportunities apparent, the PassPort website provides country-specific guidance on seasonal sales peaks (including holidays and events), cultural customs, taboos and trends, shipping and distribution logistics, currency exchange and fees, and customs procedures and taxes, all across 203 markets and in 26 currencies.

That makes the opportunities are readily apparent. But the PassPort site’s information is designed specifically to help merchants connect their goods and services with foreign markets using highly relevant information, and make it simple for business functions to be properly translated and currencies correctly calculated — which translates to making global seasonal selling a bit easier.