NEW REPORT: American Merchants Sprint To Win The X-Border Race

When it comes to wooing international shoppers, American merchants beat the rest. Once again, American retailers led the pack in our hot-off-the-presses Q4 X-Border Payments Optimization Index™, with a score of 67.8, an increase over the last two quarters. The competition, however, is now far more intense with Chinese merchants improving their score and landing second in place compared to last quarter when they tied with the U.K.

Other key takeaways from the Q4 2016 Index include:

Spain is the new rising cross-border star. Spanish merchants improved their checkout process by cutting down the total number of clicks and pages involved. The average shopping time went down from three minutes in Q3 2016 to to 2.8 minutes this past quarter.

Chinese merchants are leading the pack when it comes to offering products and services in different languages. An average of 63 percent of Chinese merchants offered six or more languages. By comparison, the U.S. and the U.K. lagged far behind.

Free shipping gained in popularity among sellers. In Q3 2015, 47 percent of the merchants offered free shipping. Now, 58 percent do.

And while the race to attract international shoppers is more intense than ever before, retailers are now taking a step back to ease their payment pain points.

PYMNTS caught up with Michael Dunworth, cofounder and CEO of Wyre, to discuss the cross-border payment hurdles slowing down business between American and Chinese merchants and how blockchain holds the key to providing a faster and secure solution to moving money around the globe.

Here’s a preview:

Dunworth said, with the increasing trade volume between U.S. and China, payments have become a major pain point for retailers who often rely on wire transfers, which can take up to three days to complete.

“P2P remittances between USA and India is extremely efficient, USA and Mexico is really efficient, but B2B transfer between here and China is just very convoluted,” he said. “There’s no simple way to do it. There are no companies that are excelling at it, and that’s what we are are going for.”

The San Francisco, CA-based company, which claims to be the fastest cross-border payment platform, relies on blockchain technology to provide faster payments.

“We are trying to get (merchants) away from the idea that waiting three days for payments is efficient.”

The company currently processes over $1 million in international payments every day and accounts for 90 percent of monthly B2B transaction volume on blockchain-based payment rails.

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TO DOWNLOAD THE 2016 Q4 PYMNTS.COM X-BORDER PAYMENTS OPTIMIZATION INDEX™, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW.

About The Index

This quarter, the PYMNTS X-Border Optimization Index™ tracks the journey of 192 merchants who are vying for their share of the global eCommerce windfall.

The index takes the pulse on how merchants are improving on attributes conducive to international eCommerce in countries that include Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the United States. The verdict: The U.S. is still ahead of the rest, but not by much.