Delivering a customer-centric cross-border Payments Platform
It was during his tenure as a senior business development manager for an online gaming company in Latin America that Tim Werner came across a vexing challenge. He observed that digital companies who wished to sell products without opening a local entity found it challenging to thrive in cross-border sales, as they were unable to process payments through local payment methods and currencies. Indeed, online retailers can accept international credit cards; however, considering the low authorisation rate of those payments (as low as 30 per cent), global sales always suffer a setback.
Additionally, Latin America is known for its regulatory complexities, low tax efficiency, and fast-changing tributary regulations, which has resulted in various bad actors trying to conduct questionable cross-border practices and reap benefits. Such hardship of online merchants—that comes with the complex payment landscape in Latin America—made Werner realise the need for a personalised and customer-centric cross-border payment platform. Driven by this realisation, he founded the company PrimeiroPay that helps international merchants conduct cross-border sales with greater transparency. “PrimeiroPay was born to reduce the complexity of payment by combining technology with a deep understanding of the financial markets where we operate in,” says Werner.
Primarily focused on the emerging markets, the company facilitates cross border payments by processing all payments domestically. This allows merchants to enable the sale of goods online to customers without levying extra taxes or significant currency exchange fees. For example: in Brazil, for every purchase made in a foreign currency, the shopper is charged an extra tax of 6.38 per cent tax over finance operations (IOF) besides the regular fees imposed by the issuing bank of the cardholder.
International payments and settlement in Latin America
Further improving the ease of payment and international settlement, PrimeiroPay provides features such as purchasing in instalments with no additional fees and interest rates. That being said, PrimeiroPay not only bridges the gap between international merchants and their end-customers but ensures a seamless payment experience for the regional retailers as well.
PrimeiroPay makes this possible through its PCI-compliant, highly-flexible, and scalable platform. Through its platform, the company’s main differential is to provide a fully-automated fixed exchange rate solution that guarantees a 24-hour locked-in rate. This allows merchants to factor in exchange rates each day when recalculating prices for their services or goods. Marketplaces can also benefit from PrimeiroPay’s split payment solution, which was developed to benefit both the merchant and their sellers, by minimising overhead costs with payouts and avoiding double conversion. It works in two concurrent steps: remittance of the marketplace’s commission in their chosen currency; payout to sellers domestically in local currencies.
PrimeiroPay also offers whitelabelled payment solutions for its clients, boosting the visibility of their brand, strengthening the loyalty of their customers, and providing the brand with a refined product.
Differentials
What makes this platform a cut above the rest is its capacity to offer a variety of fraud and security checks. PrimeiroPay protects transactions against fraud by analysing customer data and purchase history to identify fraud in real-time, maximising the number of legitimate transactions, and decreasing the risks of an online sale. In addition, the company facilitates customised and transparent reporting and settlement terms, further enhancing the seamless experience merchants have using PrimeiroPay.
“We provide our clients with efficient payment and financial solutions: automated, reliable, and customised that works across borders. No hassle, just prosperous business,” affirms Werner.
PrimeiroPay is also the exclusive distributor of Paysafecard, a global market leader in online prepaid payment methods in Brazil. The partners of PrimeiroPay offer it for online purchases with a secure pin independent of users’ bank account, credit card, or other personal information. Paysafecard confirms the payment in real-time different to local cash-based payment methods provided by Banks.
Along with such robustness in its offerings, today, the company also possesses a strong network of exclusive partnerships with reliable banks such as Citibank, global payment providers like Ingenico and Adyen, and some of the most respected law firms in Latin America. Leveraging these partnerships, PrimeiroPay is gearing ahead to disrupt the payment landscape in Latin America with its innovative solutions. Having established a base in Colombia, the company is only a few steps away from launching in other Latin American countries.
The interview with PrimeiroPay’s Managing Director, Tim Werner, was first published at CIO Applications Europe.
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