Online businesses in Canada can now accept payments in more than 130 currencies from anywhere in the world, thanks to San Francisco-based fintech startup Stripe.
Last week the company launched a multicurrency service that allows allows clients to display prices in local currencies such as Euros, pounds, pesos, or yen while receiving their funds in U.S. or Canadian dollars.
“We’ve heard from many Canadian businesses on Stripe, such as Vin65, that presenting in local currencies significantly increases conversions,” Stripe’s Canada growth lead, Govind Dandekar, wrote in a March 2 blog post, noting that “in the past, Canadian companies could accept only payments in U.S. or Canadian dollars.”
Previously, Stripe representatives explained in a release sent to ITBusiness.ca, arranging international payment options would have required liasing with separate providers and merchant processors for each currency they wanted to accept, perhaps contributing to Canada’s abysmal participation rate in cross-border ecommerce sales.
Last year, though cross-border sales were estimated to be worth $150 billion globally, only three per cent of Canadian online retail sales were based in other countries, according to Forrester research cited by the representatives, who estimate that Stripe’s multicurrency feature could reduce international card decline rates by up to 20 per cent.
“Canada is quietly becoming a hotbed for entrepreneurship, but it’s been too difficult for Canadian startups to sell globally,” Stripe head of card payments Lachy Groom said in the release. “We’re excited to help businesses in Canada take full advantage of the global internet economy.”
Multicurrency is available to all Canadian businesses powered by Stripe, which since its 2011 founding has racked up an impressive list of clients, including Shopify Inc., Salesforce.com, Facebook Inc., Yelp Inc., SAP SE, and Kickstarter.
