PayPal makes it easier for its merchants to sell products globally

Payments provider PayPal has over the years made it easier for a wide range of businesses to accept payments from customers at home and abroad. Now with its Global Sellers initiative, the company is making cross-border commerce easier for merchants using its payment services.

Through a partnership with international commerce provider WebInterpret, PayPal will help merchants get set up with localized versions of their online stores, and enable them to take orders and receive payments from international customers. The partnership also facilitates shipping and fulfillment to customers around the world.

According to PayPal Director of Global Initiatives Melissa O’Malley, it will take about a week for WebInterpret to create localized versions of most online stores. Once that’s done, international customers will be able to search, shop and pay for items in their own local language and currency. Having a localized version also boosts the SEO of their stores in different regions around the world.

By hooking into online shopping providers such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and BigCommerce, the service also facilitates global shipping around the world. WebInterpret automatically provides local shipping options at checkout and handles the logistics of local delivery, including any customs due for products shipped internationally

PayPal’s Global Sellers service is focused particularly on small and medium-sized business, launching first in the U.S. and U.K. and then eventually spreading to other regions. According to PayPal, more than 500,000 U.S.-based SMBs sold to international customers last year, and that’s without these services available to them.

And the best part of this whole thing? It’s free for sellers to set up. PayPal benefits from a greater volume of sales processed through its system, while WebInterpret makes its money from the shipping portion of the sale. And sellers can expect a modest to significant increase in revenue from new customers that they can serve outside the U.S.