eCommerce Merchants Are Wary Of Cross-Border Sales

The election of Donald Trump, the exit of the U.K. from the European Union and a declining economy in China are resulting in reduced enthusiasm on the part of merchants to sell internationally. That’s according to a new survey by Payvision, the global omnichannel solutions company.

In a press release, Payvision said that, after three years of solid growth in cross-border eCommerce, the survey came in flat this year, and it linked that lack of growth directly to the Trump win, the Brexit and the slagging Chinese economy. It doesn’t help that merchants expect future tariffs on U.S. trade with China and the U.S. withdrawal from the TTP. As a result of confusion about where those three nations are heading, merchants who participated in the study said they prefer doing cross-border business with consumers that have shared languages and cultures this year, whereas other markets are just too risky.

“The omnichannel consumer mindset is quite the opposite of merchants,” explained Gijs op de Weegh, chief operating officer at Payvision, in the press release highlighting the results of the survey. “Consider Alibaba’s Singles’ Day, the largest revenue-driving eCommerce day in the world. This year, it generated nearly $18 billion in sales in China, and almost a third of this was driven by foreign purchases. With a maturing set of millennial consumers, with more and more disposable income, the modern shopper is no longer domestic or cross-border, neither mobile nor in-store, they are everywhere.”

The always connected nature of consumers wasn’t lost on the merchants in the survey, with many of them agreeing modern consumers are always connected, shopping on their own terms, through multiple channels. As a result, 55 percent of respondents said they currently offer omnichannel retail, and a further 41 percent plan to offer it in the near future. The survey also showed the growth of mobile commerce is the biggest game-changer to cross-border trade for the third year in a row.