An Early Ship On The X-Border Holiday Season

Sometimes, the holidays can seem more busy than merry. That can be especially true for cross-border shipping companies, where the holiday season is long and (they hope) relentlessly bustling.

Shoppers in the U.S. alone are expected to spend more than $1 trillion this holiday season, largely on gifts for loved ones. That can mean some serious challenges for shipping companies, like FedEx, which recently announced it would add 30 planes and 7,000 new vehicles to its fleet by year’s end.

PYMNTS recently caught up with Chip Hull, vice president of FedEx Cross Border, the eCommerce technology subsidiary of FedEx that has access to more than 220 countries and territories, to discuss the logistical challenges involved with planning and operating during the busy holiday shopping season.

Here’s a preview:

Measuring freight fraud and potential system capacity concerns are just two of the metrics that the company monitors to ensure the smooth sailing of its holiday shipping operation, Hull said.

And while using the feedback to make upgrades is essential for seamless operation, it is sometimes pivotal to limit the number of changes being introduced into the system during critical times to ensure system stability, he added.

With an operation involving more than 20,000 freight trucks shuttling between 370 service centers, a lot can go wrong — transportation delay and weather, just to name a couple. This makes it imperative to have a backup plan should a surge arise, Hull noted.

“The worst thing that could happen for us is to have outages or slowdowns during those peak times,” he said. “We’re very conscientious about that.”

Around the X-Border commerce world

In recent weeks, partnerships took center stage for several cross-border players from around the space, as they looked to bolster their payment technology offerings. For example, PayPal’s Braintree recently announced a new partnership with PayPal and Visa to allow Visa Checkout to be accessible to Braintree retailers in 2017.

Meanwhile, IOU Financial and Paysafe have partnered to provide North American small businesses with advice and services by using their lending and payment platforms, respectively, and DHL Parcel Europe announced it would expand its cross-border eCommerce service by working closely with companies in Hungary and Slovenia.

The October X-Border Payments Optimization Tracker also features the latest news and analysis and contains profiles of 116 global payment service providers, including six new additions to the Tracker.

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To download the October edition of the PYMNTS X-Border Payments Optimization Tracker, click the button below.

About The Tracker

The PYMNTS X-Border Payments Optimization Tracker is the framework for evaluating players in the cross-border payments landscape, and the quarterly index tests the readiness of the companies to serve a global audience.