How to build trust in cross-border transactions?
PagSeguro International
PagSeguro enables worldwide merchants to easily access Latin America by offering local payment methods.
Trust is fundamental, but also a trendy buzzword – especially when paired with another term talked about all the time these days, AI. But what does trust actually entail when it comes to cross-border transactions? What are the main parameters businesses selling abroad should maintain and guarantee to their customers – and how can payment providers support them??
If trust is fundamental for all business partnerships, this is even more true in the financial segment. With billion-dollar volumes, high level compliance demands, increasing need for speed and agility, cross-border transactions require an outstanding level of trust and reliability – even more so in Latin America.?
This requires financial and technological robustness, but, okay – it’s the basics. Ensuring the quality and the security of the actual transactions is just the start.?
In this edition of #PagNews, we’ll show you how to build long-term successful partnerships with your clients and how global companies can navigate Latin America’s challenging landscape, going much further than (only) technical reliability.?
?? Check out also: Ebook | How to Build Trust in Cross-Border Transactions?
Dive in!?
The anti-fraud analysis cross-border payments require?
Even if building true trust should go much further than risk assessment, that is still a fundamental part of the cross-border operation. Thus, when it comes to payment partners, one of the most important differentials your company should look for is: how prepared is this service provider to handle fraud attempts?
That is even more true if your cross-border sales include the Latin American region. E-commerce revenue has massively increased in Latam in the last few years, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic hit. However, with this evolution, fraud attempts and losses due to fraud increase and harm companies’ revenues, especially medium-sized ones. The rise in fraud attempts and occurrences happens largely due to the increase in digital sales processes and in moments of financial instability.
But as digital processes evolve, so thus fraud technology. How can your business take advantage of market growth without exposure to fraud and its subsequent financial losses??
How PagSeguro’s Smart Fraud Prevention works?
Our 17 years of experience in high-risk local payment transactions and our robust infrastructure allows us to provide cutting-edge, reliable fraud prevention technology. In just a few steps, which are carried out automatically based on machine learning, PagSeguro's Smart Fraud Prevention happens as explained below:
?? Check out also: Infographic | How our Smart Fraud Prevention strengthens your business?
The importance of specialized Customer Support?
If any company should strive to offer outstanding Customer Support, businesses selling abroad have even bigger challenges regarding that: there might be language barriers, a lack of cultural understanding, time zone differences, and the challenge of managing such a team from a great distance. Thus, the ideal scenario would be counting on a partner to handle that for you.
After all, counting on customer service specialists that are able to speak Spanish and Portuguese is a must if you sell to Latin America. Better yet if they are native speakers, since then you will be better prepared to support customers from all Latam countries not only in terms of language, but also of culture.
That is why, at PagSeguro, we ensure the Customer Support for our clients’ end-users – so you do not have to worry about that, while still guaranteeing the best support your customers need and deserve. We offer 24/7 local customer support in 4 different languages across a myriad of channels, aligned with the business needs of our worldwide merchants and their customers.?
?? Check out also: The Customer Support your end-users need?
Getting the best from Artificial Intelligence?
When it comes to the payment and technology worlds’ favorite buzzword of the year, Artificial Intelligence, it’s important to look deeper into it and understand that AI cannot be just a trendy buzzword for companies to try and leverage, but a strategically-applied technology that, when well used, can have business-changing results – which include improving efforts focused on building trust, our focus here.?
Tying this to our previous chapter on fraud prevention, where there is extraordinary value and potential for AI: as fraudsters evolve and catching them before the fact becomes more difficult, AI can help better understand the fraudsters' profile, behavior, and process. There's a downside to this, though — on one hand, AI is being successfully used to hinder fraudsters, but on the other, it's also being used by the fraudsters to improve their attempts. As usually happens with anti-fraud processes, it's essential to stay ahead of the other side and constantly evolve risk analysis in order to be able to avoid fraud without causing too much friction for valid customers.?
Another great highlight for the usage of AI for cross-border transactions — and beyond — is the creation of hyper-personalized processes and services, offering innovative and "tailor-made" experiences for the customers through new ways of interacting with a product. Considering the heavy regulatory requirements and internal processes financial companies deal with, AI can allow businesses to offer flexible UX without losing the strong level of control the sector demands.?
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Thus, it's key to look at your customer's true expectations, consider their behavior and their requirements, to then apply AI to improve on their overall experience, strenghten anti-risk processes, and think about new products and perspectives with Artificial Intelligence that benefit your business and your audience beyond just being able to say you use AI.?
?? Check out also: Artificial Intelligence for payment companies?
The fundamental need for transparency?
With new high-risk verticals such as betting taking center stage and the rising need for cross-border payments, Artificial Intelligence leveraging databases, among other evolutions, compliance demands just tend to become stricter. It's important, then, to understand compliance and regulation not as obstacles, but as key pillars of the financial industry, helping protect and keep the standard for companies and customers. Transparency is a must here, not only between your company and your end-users, but from your chosen cross-border payment provider toward your business as well.?
Being part of PagBank, the second biggest digital bank in Brazil, PagSeguro’s operations are regulated by the Brazilian Central Bank and regulations from Latin America and America′s markets, such as LGPD and SOx law. Also, we are PCI DSS compliance certified, and all transactions undergo our Anti-Money Laundering & Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML-CFT) analysis, which searches the name of the consumer in the OFAC Sanctions List.?
Besides, we offer no cross-border surcharges, so you know exactly what are the fees for each transaction with PagSeguro, so you don’t have to worry about additional undisclosed fees. Through our practical and transparent dashboard, you can view, manage and get detailed insights on your Latam operations. It’s transparency every step of the way, a value perceived by you and your end-users when making their payments.?
Why (and how) you should invest in localization?
There is one strategy that should be kept in mind throughout all your cross-border payment strategy: localization. Payment localization refers to the process of adapting your whole payments experience to the needs of a region other than your own – in this case, Latin America. So let’s take a look at why – and how – to successfully implement payment localization to sell to Latin America and support your efforts toward building trust.?
Offer local payment methods??
Local payment methods are the basis of payment localization. It’s a fundamental aspect for companies aiming to achieve success and high sales numbers in Latam, since local methods are the most used in the region’s countries.??
Companies selling to Latin America but offering only internationally-enabled credit cards as payment methods would engage only an extremely low number of Latin American consumers. The highest volumes and growth rates come from local payment methods not commonly seen on the global stage, such as domestic-only credit and debit cards, localized cash options, local digital wallets, and, of course, the major instant payment phenomenon in Brazil – Pix.?
In PagSeguro’s white paper E-commerce and Payment Landscape in Latin America, we’ve shown that domestic-only credit cards accounted for 23% of the total ecommerce sales volume in 2024, while internationally-enabled credit cards represent less than 21.5%. In total, 78.5% of all Latam ecommerce sales will be paid for with local payment methods this year.?
These numbers highlight the importance of foreign merchants offering local payment methods if the aim is to successfully boost your business in Latin America. By partnering up with a local payments company, you guarantee more payment options with a single integration and a smoother settlement process, without the need of opening a local entity in the target country. This is key if you want to offer a truly localized payment experience for your customers.?
Charge in local currency?
Localizing payments has to do, first of all, with creating an experience suited for a specific audience. For Latin Americans, paying for cross-border sales in local currency is not only a matter of more agility and clarity – but also of stronger financial security.?
That is because Latam’s local currencies, such as the Brazilian Real and the Argentine Peso, are historically highly fluctuating and devalued when compared with the Dollar or the Euro, for example. Thus, when a Latin American customer makes a purchase priced in Dollars, chances are very high that the final total amount will increase between the purchase date and the credit card billing statement’s closing date.?
Latin Americans are very wary of currency fluctuation, so by charging directly in local currency, the customer knows exactly how much they are paying, which increases conversion rates. By being transparent regarding the final price, this also helps boost trust with your end-users.?
Understand the local customer base?
Latin American consumers are always looking for innovative shopping experiences, competitive prices, and vast product variety. Understanding this is fundamental to scale your business in the region, since it impacts everything: from product selection to the payment step, Latin American consumers require agility, innovation, and transparency. As we have seen, payment localization is a must if your company aims to offer that for Latam.?
Understanding and following the needs and the demands of the customers is what must drive all business strategies and choices, from when to use or not use Generative AI to what new products to focus on. Here, it's important to always keep in mind the core of the business, the company's values, and what it strives for in the industry.??
With those things at the center, better decisions can be made — and long-standing, reliable trust can be built between your company and your customers, no matter where in the world they are.?
See? Building trust between business and customers is especially fundamental considering cross-border payments, where specificities require even more care, transparency, and reliability in a way that is visible to the end-user – from offering them local payment methods, to ensuring compliance and security, to being transparent regarding fees and conversion rates.?
?? To boost your business?in Latin America with the support of an expert local payments solution, click here to get in touch with our team and understand exactly how we can help you build trust.