The kinds of local payment method
What makes a method local is where it is used, not how it works. The group includes:
- Bank transfer schemes started from the buyer's banking app
- Real-time account-to-account systems run by a central bank
- Domestic card schemes, alongside or instead of the global ones
- Mobile wallets holding a balance
- Cash vouchers paid at a shop, a kiosk or a cash machine
- Instalment and pay-later services from local lenders
How a local payment method is added to a checkout
A merchant abroad rarely connects to a local method directly. Its payment service provider connects, or uses an aggregator, and often needs a local entity or a local partner to be admitted. The payment page then shows the method only to buyers in that country, in their language and currency.
Each method behaves in its own way: some confirm in seconds and some after days, some cannot be refunded through the same channel, and many have no chargeback. Settlement arrives in the local currency, so the provider converts it and reconciles a separate report for each method.
Why local payment methods matter
Buyers abandon a checkout that does not show the way they normally pay. For a gateway serving merchants with customers in several countries, the list of local methods it supports is a large part of what it sells, alongside card acceptance.
Local or alternative payment method?
- Alternative payment method
- Any method that is not a payment on a global card scheme. Most local methods are alternative ones, but a domestic card scheme is local and still a card.
- Local acquiring
- Processing card payments through an acquirer in the buyer's country. Local acquiring concerns cards, not other methods.
Where a local payment method shows up in a platform
Modules that do the work
- CheckoutA hosted checkout for cards, wallets, bank payments and crypto, routed to the best provider.
- Card acquiringCard acceptance on the phone, in store and online, through the acquirer you choose.
- FXCurrency conversion with live rates, your margins and the liquidity provider you choose.
- LedgerThe double-entry book of record behind every balance, fee and transfer.