There’s definitely gold in global acquiring, but there’s no gold rush. Merchant demand is real. A large software company that was selling its products globally in many countries approached First Data recently as a potential global acquirer, reports Souheil Badran, senior vice president and division manager for the e-commerce group. “They were having too many reporting problems. They were concerned about managing their foreign exchange exposure. They wanted to see if we could consolidate it into a single relationship with us to simplify their card payments,” he explains. “And they wanted one acquirer to support plans to expand into the Asia-Pacific and EMEA [Europe, Middle East, and Africa] regions. There was a substantial payoff for their cash management and treasury operations.”
And global acquiring offers growth. While the economy has becalmed many domestic acquirers and ISOs, “our business has taken off like a hockey-stick graph,” reports Carrie Bardeen Hometh, senior vice president for sales at Payvision, an Amsterdam-based international acquirer and multiple currency payment processor. “I’m hiring a new employee a week to deal with our growth. When online merchants globalize and let shoppers pay in their own currency, their sales increase. The days are gone when you can force customers to pay in U.S. dollars.”
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