Open Sesame (Please): Merchants Come Knocking On Europe’s Door

Cross-border sales are expected to be 15 percent of total global eCommerce by 2018. The PYMNTS X-Border Payments Optimization Index^TM, powered by Digital River, tracks the journey of 195 merchants that are vying for their share of that eCommerce windfall.

Every quarter we take the pulse of merchants’ improvement in prices, payments, shipping, support and checkout in markets like Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.

The verdict: The best keep getting better, but the laggers do not.

What winners did differently

• Speedy Checkout – Offering the “same as” option for shipping and billing address fields increased dramatically. And the number of merchants that have country-specific address fields, including dropdowns for common values like country and state, rose 11 percent.
• No Lingua Franca – Merchants who lead the pack offer more language and customer support.
• Show them the “right” money – 80 percent of the Top 10 merchants support six or more currencies.

Key Numbers

• Annual eCommerce spend in Europe this year will touch $200 billion
• 46 percent of Americans will shop online this holiday season, up from 44 percent last year.
• 80 percent of Chinese online shoppers make cross-border purchases.

Europe’s tryst with eCommerce

Forty-one percent of merchants in North America want to take their business to Europe. But Europe has a bit of cleaning up to do before it can open those doors. In this edition, we enumerate the hits and misses of Europe’s policy agenda is making the region attractive for cross-border merchants.

Download the X-Border Payments Optimization Index^TM below.