US Account, UK Debit Cards

Looking to accept UK Debit cards without having to obtain UK Merchant a/c

[Flux]

Hello,

I am running a site which sells internationally, but has a large number of UK customers. For the UK customers the amount is shown in GBP, and payments are taken from Visa and Mastercard.

I am losing potential UK sales due to not accepting Switch/Maestro and Solo debit cards. (JCB is a smaller issue).

I have an full account with worldpay - but they offer UK debit cards only if settlement/remittance is in GBP.

My payments are settled in US $ and sent to US bank account, so worldpay is not an option.

I also have a separate US merchant account, and so if there is some payment provider which would accept these payments. I would be happy to have some sort of commission or basic charge to transferring to $.

I hope this is clear...getting the initial set up was confusing enough.

So to clarify, I'm looking for a payment or merchant account which works with my current setup if that's possible.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[kris_winter]

Barclays EPDQ has a multicurrency option that you can charge in US dollars and accept those cards.

[Flux]

Hi,

Thanks for that. I believe that Barclay's International Currency service is limited to processing Visa and Mastercard, which means its essentially the same as Worldpay - if you don't settle in GBP, you don't get to process Solo/Maestro/Switch - but if I'm mistaken, please correct me because i'd be very happy to be wrong.

I would be interested to know what other members have done - i've read before that debit cards account for up to 50% of UK sales, which is a huge chunk of potential sales.

[soquinn]

I’ve been presented with a similar situation and thought of maybe just settling in GBP? The only disadvantage I can think of would be bank delays in foreign currency settlements - maybe 30 days before clearing?

[Flux]

Hi,

I wouldn't have a problem with a delay, but I've checked with my bank account and have been informed that any payment not made in US $ would be rejected.

I had thought that there might be a company which offers a service with extra currency conversion before settlement, for an extra percentage or a small difference in currency rates, but I've yet to find one.

[Flux]

So I am missing out on something very obvious - i've run a search on here, but I didn't find anything, as the search seems to run a broad rather than exact match.

Either I'm missing something very obvious, or if there simply is no service for what I'm looking for, then there's a big hole in the market. I'm more concerned with the hole in my potential sales.

[nonstop]

yes you can accept Switch/Solo/Maestro/Delta/Visa Electron/Visa/Mastercard/AMEX via paypal.

[Flux]

I can accept them if I have a US paypal account?

Thanks