Payment Preferences Abroad

December 23rd, 2010 by tema

As different as mentality and language themselves can be, each country has its own preferences when it comes to payment. In the UK and the USA, most people have absolutely no problem buying items by credit card all the time, using cash only occasionally.

If you have to decide which method of payment you are going to use on your localised website, you should know the cultural and regional differences of your clients in comparison to your own preferences.

A country, where the payment preferences differ immensely from those in the UK is Germany, for example. In Germany, people tend to use cash whenever they can in stores and super markets. In fact, some stores do not even accept credit or debit cards if the shopping value does not exceed a certain amount of money (e.g. € 20). In restaurants, the situation is quite similar. Generally, Germans are very reluctant to pay by credit card, as rather high costs are involved in comparison to cash and debit card, for example. But even debit cards only come to use if you do not have enough cash on you. On average, cards are regarded as seductive, because they encourage you to spend money you might not even have. For a culture like the one in Germany, where being in control of your expenses is seen as one of the most important virtues, this can cause problems.

Interestingly enough, online payment is also quite different. In Germany, people are not afraid of using one-off direct debit – it is actually very popular and used a lot. The reason for this is that in Germany the costs for direct debit are almost non-existent in comparison to the UK, for example.

If you set up a payment gateway during your international web campaign, keep an eye on the cultural preferences. Methods of payment widely used here do not necessarily have to be very popular abroad.