Overseas payments

Electronic payments

Electronic payments are the easiest ways to deal with international payments. Among the channels you might consider:

• Credit Cards. Make sure that you have capacity to handle transactions in the most common international cards, such as Visa or MasterCard.
• Google Checkout. Checkout is Google’s fast, secure, online purchasing platform. Checkout is available to US and UK merchants, and buyers from over 200 countries and territories.
• PayPal. PayPal is an e-commerce intermediary payment platform allowing transactions between accounts directly through the Internet. It accepts a wide variety of global payment methods without opening multiple local merchant accounts. Through PayPal, you can receive payments from more than 150 million accounts worldwide, with customers across 190 countries and 17 currencies.

Insurance

Insure items that you’re sending internationally as there’s a higher risk of loss or damage in transit. Many postal services automatically provide some coverage. However, you may want to consider including insurance charges in your total postage costs or give buyers the option to purchase insurance separately.