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I'm also from Australia and have recently gone through the process of getting a merchant account (from St.George bank).

From stories I heard in the past, I was expecting a horrible experience (banks not being able to grok the concept of digital goods etc). Turns out that either the stories were a furphy or banks have gotten a lot better.

Here's the process I went through.

1. Application

2. Set up a single page website to give a brief overview of product

3. Include TOS and returns policy (adapted from wordpress.com)

4. Wait 7 days for approval

Thats it. One week to get a merchant account with no prior business history. The rates are fairly standard:

1.4%/trans, $33 monthly, $44 anual fee, $33 chargeback fee

I think off the top of my head those rates beat those provided by paypal, stripe, etc. although I'm happy to be corrected if anyone has up-to-date info about them

I'll also be paying $300/yr for gateway fees since I have no desire to handle CC details directly.

St George is excellent, the NAB didn't want to know us but had no problems with St George in the 2 years we have used them.

St George really is an exception! I've had all sorts of problems in the past with other banks. In recent times Bankwest has been great too, but St George wins for API's available if you need to do more than just accept payments on the web.

Things have certainly improved in Australia. When I first applied for a merchant account for a startup over 10 years ago the guys at ANZ sent out a sales person to our office who bought along a range of EFTPOS (debit card) terminals to demo.

When we clarified that we required online payments, he chuckled and said 'oh, no way we do that, it is far too dangerous'.

He then proposed a compromise solution where we collect credit card numbers and then punch them manually into the terminal to process payments.

We ended up incorporating in the USA.

Ok, but to the topic at hand - are you able to bill directly in USD with St George without the buyer wearing the exchange risk and overseas transaction fee?

I ask because merchant accounts denominated in AUD are widely available, but for USD it still appears that only the NAB have multi-currency support.

Sorry.. I'm not sure what you mean by 'exchange risk'.

To your question though.. no I cant bill directly in USD. I am very new (and ignorant) to receiving online payments, so I'm really curious what the issues for Americans are. The on-line currency converters are accurate to (I would guess) +- 1hour currency fluctuations so would give a very accurate estimate (to within cents) of the cost of a transaction... Wouldn't this be good enough?

Otherwise if this is an issue then paypal should do the job... 2 mins to set up and gives an alternative option.

Would be good to hear your own personal experiences.

No, not good enough. Each bank chooses different exchange rates. Using a converter gives you a spot price from one institution. There's no telling what the customer will actually be billed. Indeed there's no certainty that the transaction will even be journalled that day. Moreover, they'll be slugged for an "overseas transaction fee". Finally, it means you're unable to use any kind of collateral that quotes a price, because you can't guarantee it.

It's a marketing disaster, in fact, and would look completely amateurish.

Paypal is never Plan A.

Thanks for your insight. I guess as an Aussie I'm used to seeing a slightly different amount (usually within $1) of the quoted USD for a transaction... however maybe US users are different. In any event, I think given that my own business is only just launching I'll have to go the less than pro route of offering paypal along with direct payment (in AUD) and hopefully that will garner me enough business to start looking into direct USD transactions.

> However I was not willing to accept the risk and complexity of incorporating in an unfamiliar legal/financial jurisdiction and I really don't feel the OP has made me any more comfortable although they seem flush about it.

It could be (but I don't know) that while Australia is not too far from the US in terms of the legal/financial stuff, India is not so great, so it's worth going to the US in any event. For instance, here in Italy, I don't think that highly of the legal system, so there is a bit more incentive for some people to take the risk and go abroad like this. Of course, everyone needs to evaluate it according to their own situation.

As long as you can get away without multi currency transactions. We had a founder in the US so made it easier to incorporate there and get a multi currency merchant account. Only issue is the fees, which are driving us to incorporate in the UK to get a decent GBP rate.

Stripe/ Pin are great but still don't solve multi currency, Pin is offering USD and AUD, haven't seen any rates from them yet though.

Are multi-currency payments an issue when selling abroad? I'm totally new to receiving online payments and am genuinely curious about the issues surrounding accepting only a single currency.

As an Australian consumer I'm used to paying in USD and simply seeing a slightly different amount show up on my transaction history (AUD being generally at parity with USD)

Is having multi-currency support important? Does it impact sales? Is using something like money.js to give a close estimate of actual cost good enough?

To an extent you are right, you can probably get away without it.

I think it helps with localised branding. Sure we are really just one website, with one shipping location (and we aren't hiding this fact). But displaying GBP prices and charging people exactly that price, in the currency they are used to, without any international transaction fee popping up makes a difference.

This, along with creating a local phone number and physical address, gives the customers a better feeling that you are localised to their country.

Of course we haven't actually tested this both ways to see what the difference would be.

To put it simply, yes. Americans will run a mile if you're billing in currency other than USD. You're looking ca. 80% drop in conversion rate. Approximation is not an option, it's all about perception.

Whereas the ROTW is pretty much accustomed to being billed in USD online and the impact is far lower.

For me, for my market, AUD+USD are mandatory and optionally GBP/EUR are a strong plus.

Not sure if you've seen it yet, but you might be interested in https://pin.net.au/.

I haven't used it, but it seems to be Stripe-for-Australians...

Edit: now I've read your post properly I see you have seen Pin.