PRODUCTS / RETAILERS


The internet has opened-up global markets to retailers. They can now sell almost any product to customers in any country. One of the main difficulties in this approach is the ability to accept payment from customers in a secure, fast and economical manner.

As an example a UK based retailer wanting to sell products to customers in Germany would normally accept Visa and Mastercard cards as payment options because that is the usual approach in UK, and is the only service banks offer these retailers in the UK. However, the penetration of credit cards in Germany is very low - approximately only 20% of the population own them. So by only offering only Visa and Mastercard the UK Merchant is immediately and drastically reducing his potential market size in Germany. The merchant could look at offering bank transfers whereby the German customer would perform an international bank transfer to the merchant’s UK bank account. Unfortunately, for most retail transactions, the cost of an international bank transfer will deter both the customer and the Merchant from using this as a viable payment option.

In Germany (and in much of Europe and Asia) customers are much more used to cash-based payments. Most individuals have bank accounts and are used to using them to spend money online with local German merchants. Thus if a non-German merchant offers local bank transfers they are far more likely to succeed.

Also, when dealing with new markets and new customers it is natural for merchants to worry about fraud and repudiation. Receiving and paying funds via bank transfers removes the potential for fraud and returns as the banks’ own security is vetting all transactions, and the funds are ‘cleared’. 		Perhaps most importantly, the Envoy charging model means Merchants are never be charged more than £6.00 for any transaction. This is different to credit card pricing models where a percentage charge applies to the entire transaction sum. Furthermore, an Envoy transaction also removes potentially unacceptably high foreign exchange charges levied by credit card companies. And finally unlike Credit Cards, Envoy bank transfers do not allow Consumers to reverse transactions after the event, thus reducing fraud and ‘charge-backs’.

Envoy also helps retailers by allowing them to send funds back to their customers and suppliers. Sending money to customers for refunds, special offers or other reasons is almost impossible using anything other than a cheque or a bank transfer. Cheques are slow, expensive and they require effort from customers. Bank transfers are ideal but can be very expensive. Envoy allows merchants to pay back directly to customer’s bank accounts either on a “one off” or “batch” basis. Because these payments are performed on a local basis they are much cheaper and faster than other transaction methods, and the customer receives the money directly into their bank account without having to handle cheques.
 
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