As a Japanese company, how to make payments from foreign countries easier?
Foreign customers wanting to buy my product have to engage in overcomplex procedures to send money to my company's Japanese bank: Even though seemingly based on SWIFT, it involves extra steps like sending a letter with tons of information and long Japanese street names that the customer needs to be spell right, sometimes being even required to go via an intermediary US or German bank.
This is extremely cumbersome, many customers just give up because of this.
What is the best practice for Japanese companies to receive payments from foreign countries? Anything easier than opening an account in a country that uses IBAN?
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What is the average amount? If you're selling a low-priced item then you can use online credit card payments. – Frenchie 11 years ago
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@frenchie: About 120 USD per unit, but most companies buy tens/hundreds of them. – Nic 11 years ago
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That's credit card territory! – Frenchie 11 years ago
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Sorry I updated my comment while you replied to it... – Nic 11 years ago
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Ah ok, it's 120 per unit and you sell lots of units. So if it's a matter of 1,200 to 120,000 then credit cards are not be the best option. Out of curiosity, what are you selling? – Frenchie 11 years ago
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@frenchie Enterprise desktop sync software http://cmissync.com – Nic 11 years ago
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Interesting! Could you please make it an answer so that I can accept it? Thanks! – Nic 11 years ago
1 Answer
I would offer the credit card option and then, in countries where you think you'll be doing the bulk of your large enterprise business, I would open a subsidiary. That way, you can open a bank account so that beyond a certain limit people can pay you with a check or a wire transfer to a local bank. And then you deal with the international transfer between these these bank accounts and Japan. I think the bulk of your initial business might be small companies so that's why credit cards should still be there.
