How To Process Local Payments With Unlimit Accounts: A Guide For E-commerce Businesses

Regardless of the quality of their products or marketing, many businesses’ global expansion plans fail at checkout because customers can’t pay the way they normally do.

Research shows that although over 59% of global consumers shop with businesses outside their country, 10% report abandoning their carts due to a lack of payment options. Adding relevant local payment methods has also been shown to improve checkout conversion rates by up to 30% across different markets.

The challenge is that every market has its own consumer habits, regulations, currencies, and preferred payment methods. For businesses expanding internationally, supporting these local preferences often means managing multiple providers and navigating regional compliance requirements, but it doesn’t have to be so.

What are local payment methods?

Local payment methods are the payment options that consumers in a particular country or region use the most. They reflect regional consumer behaviour.

For instance, most shoppers in the UK prefer paying with debit cards, while PIX and UPI are the most commonly used payment methods in Brazil and India, respectively.

Examples of local payment methods

Here are some of the most common types of local payment methods used around the world:

• Digital wallets: Digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay allow customers to pay quickly without manually entering their card details
• Real-time payments (RTPs): Many countries now have instant bank transfer networks, such as Brazil’s PIX, that enable customers to pay directly from their bank accounts in seconds
• Buy now, pay later (BNPL): BNPL services allow customers to split purchases into instalments, making larger purchases more affordable
• Alternative payment methods (APMs): A broad range of locally preferred payment options beyond traditional cards, including bank transfers, account-to-account payments, QR code payments, or cash voucher systems.

Why local payment methods matter

When customers reach the checkout, they expect to see payment methods they already know and use. If those options aren’t available, many will abandon their purchase and buy from a competitor instead.

Beyond improving conversion, local payment methods can also make payment operations more efficient. Processing transactions through domestic payment rails helps businesses reduce cross-border processing costs, improve authorisation rates, and settle funds more efficiently compared with routing payments internationally.

How to accept local payment methods?

1. Establish local entities

For many years, businesses looking to accept local payments had little choice but to establish a legal entity in each country where they wanted to operate.

This often involved registering a local business, opening domestic bank accounts, meeting tax obligations, and navigating complex regulatory requirements before they could access local payment networks. While this approach provides direct access to domestic payment systems, it’s also expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to scale across multiple markets.

2. Partner with a provider that has local acquiring licences

Financial infrastructure providers with established local acquiring licences and direct access to domestic payment networks enable businesses to accept local cards, digital wallets, and alternative payment methods without having to set up a legal entity in every market.

Instead of managing multiple providers and navigating regional regulations independently, businesses can enter new markets by connecting to a single platform that maps local payment ecosystems into one unified infrastructure.

Unlimit Accounts for global payment acceptance

Unlimit Accounts gives businesses access to the payment ecosystems their customers prefer through a single integration. Instead of connecting to multiple providers across different markets, merchants can manage global payment acceptance from one platform while delivering local payment experiences at checkout.

With Unlimit Accounts, businesses can:

• Offer customers their preferred payment method, creating a familiar checkout experience
• Receive, hold, and settle funds across multiple currencies, simplifying international operations and reducing the complexity of cross-border payments
• Connect once to the infrastructure and access payment capabilities across multiple regions
• Improve payment performance through intelligent payment routing, which helps optimise transactions through the most appropriate acquiring routes
• Track transactions, monitor performance, and manage payment operations on the centralised dashboard 
• Benefit from transparent pricing and foreign exchange.

The result is more than simplified payment acceptance. Businesses can reduce friction at checkout, improve conversion rates, lower cart abandonment, and build greater trust with customers. At the same time, they gain the flexibility to enter new markets faster without the operational complexity traditionally associated with international expansion.

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