Payment gateways drive global e-commerce by letting a store accept the way each market actually pays: local cards through local acquiring, prices shown in the shopper's currency, popular local methods such as iDEAL, Pix or UPI, and the authentication rules (like strong customer authentication in Europe) that banks expect. Get these right and more cross-border orders are approved and fewer are abandoned; get them wrong and international traffic turns into declined cards and empty carts.
Gateway, processor, acquirer: who does what
"Payment gateway" is often used as shorthand for the whole payment stack, but several roles sit behind a single checkout button:
- Gateway: the technology that securely captures payment details at checkout and passes them on for authorization.
- Processor: routes the transaction through the card networks or other payment rails and returns the approve or decline response.
- Acquirer (merchant bank): the licensed institution that accepts the payment on the merchant's behalf and settles the funds to the merchant.
- Payment service provider (PSP): a company that bundles some or all of the above, often together with local payment methods and fraud tools, under one contract and one integration.
For a domestic store the distinction rarely matters. For a store selling abroad it matters a great deal, because where and how each transaction is acquired affects approval, cost and settlement.
Local acquiring: why the location of the transaction matters
When a shopper's card is issued in one country and the merchant's acquirer is in another, the payment is processed as a cross-border transaction. Issuing banks tend to scrutinize these more closely, card schemes often apply cross-border fees, and some local cards and debit schemes are only accepted through domestic acquiring.
Local acquiring means the payment is acquired by an entity in the shopper's own market, so the issuer sees a domestic transaction. Many global PSPs offer this in their larger markets. The practical benefits to look for are:
- higher authorization rates for local cards, especially debit cards;
- lower or no cross-border scheme fees;
- access to domestic card brands and local payment methods;
- clearer descriptors on the shopper's statement, which reduces "I don't recognize this charge" disputes.
Not every business needs local acquiring from day one. It usually pays off once a single foreign market produces enough volume for declines and fees to show up clearly in your reports.
Currency presentment and settlement
Showing prices in the shopper's own currency removes mental arithmetic and surprise conversion fees. There are two different things to separate here:
Presentment currency
This is the currency the shopper sees and pays in. Well-implemented multi-currency pricing uses clean, rounded local prices rather than live conversions that change by the minute, and keeps shipping, taxes and refunds in the same currency as the original order.
Dynamic currency conversion
Dynamic currency conversion (DCC) offers a shopper with a foreign card the choice to pay in their home currency, with the conversion done by the merchant's side at a rate that may include a markup. It can look similar to local pricing, but it is a different product. If you use it, make the rate and the choice transparent.
Settlement currency
This is the currency the money arrives in. Settling in the local currency and converting later, or settling straight into your home currency, changes who carries exchange-rate risk and when. Check payout timing, conversion fees and reserve requirements per market, not just the headline processing rate.
Local payment methods by market
Cards are not the default everywhere. According to the Global Payments Report 2026, digital wallets accounted for 56% of global online spending in 2025, while direct card use accounted for 31%. The mix shifts sharply by region and country:
| Market | What dominates online or digital payments | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Global | Digital wallets 56% of online spending, cards 31% (2025) | Global Payments Report 2026 |
| United States | Cards 49% of online spending, digital wallets 40% (2025) | Global Payments Report 2026 |
| Asia-Pacific | Digital wallets 77% of online spending, cards 15% (2025) | Global Payments Report 2026 |
| Netherlands | iDEAL used for 71% of online purchases (2025) | Dutch Payments Association |
| Brazil | Pix processed almost 80 billion transactions in 2025 | Banco Central do Brasil, via Brazil's Ministry of Finance |
| India | UPI accounted for 85% of digital payments in fiscal year 2025-26 | Press Information Bureau, Government of India |
A few implications for merchants:
- Europe is fragmented. Cards travel well, but many countries have strong domestic methods. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Payments Association says every iDEAL merchant will have switched to Wero by the end of 2027 at the latest, so a Dutch checkout needs a provider that follows that transition.
- Account-to-account payments are mainstream in some large markets. In 2025, Pix was used by 148 million individuals and 12.8 million businesses in Brazil. India's UPI processed more than 241 billion transactions in fiscal year 2025-26.
- Wallets sit on top of cards in many markets. Offering the major wallets usually improves mobile checkout without changing your acquiring setup.
Choice matters at the checkout itself: in Baymard Institute's checkout research (page updated September 2025), 9% of shoppers who abandoned an order said there weren't enough payment methods. For a method-by-method view of costs and trade-offs, see our guide to e-commerce payment methods compared.
Strong customer authentication and 3-D Secure
In the European Economic Area, the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) requires strong customer authentication (SCA) for most online payments: the shopper confirms the payment with two independent factors, such as a banking app plus a PIN or biometric. For cards, this is done through 3-D Secure, the protocol behind the bank verification step at checkout.
The evidence says it works. The joint EBA-ECB report on payment fraud, published in December 2025, found that transactions verified with SCA were generally less susceptible to fraud, and that card payment fraud was 17 times higher when the payment recipient was outside the EEA, where SCA is not legally required and often not used. The same report put total payment fraud in the EEA at €4.2 billion in 2024, with the overall fraud rate stable at around 0.002% of the total value of transactions.
For a merchant selling into Europe, this means:
- Your gateway must support current 3-D Secure versions and handle the authentication step smoothly on mobile.
- Exemptions, for example for low-value or low-risk transactions, can reduce friction, but the EBA-ECB report notes that fraudsters increasingly target transactions where an exemption is applied.
- Authentication and fraud screening should work together: authenticate when risk is higher, and keep the flow short when it is not.
Fraud tools beyond authentication
Cross-border orders carry more unknowns: new customers, distant shipping addresses and unfamiliar card issuers. Modern gateways and PSPs typically combine several layers:
- Tokenization: card numbers are replaced with tokens, so your store never stores raw card data and repeat purchases stay secure.
- Risk scoring: each transaction is scored using signals such as device, location, order value and purchase velocity, and risky orders are blocked or sent for review.
- Address and card verification: checks on the billing address and security code catch obvious mismatches.
- Dispute management: evidence submission and alerts help you respond to chargebacks before they cost you the order value plus fees.
Rules that suit one market can be wrong for another. A high share of orders shipped to a freight forwarder may be normal in one corridor and a warning sign in another, so review fraud rules per market rather than globally. Balance matters too: in the same Baymard research, 10% of abandoning shoppers said their card was declined, and some of those declines are legitimate buyers blocked by overly strict rules.
A practical checklist for selling cross-border
- Start from your data. Rank target countries by traffic and orders, then research how shoppers in each one pay.
- Cover the top methods per market. Cards and the major wallets almost everywhere, plus the leading local method where one dominates.
- Price in local currency where it matters, with rounded prices and consistent currency through shipping, tax and refunds.
- Check authorization rates by country. If a market's approval rate lags, ask your provider about local acquiring.
- Get SCA right for Europe and test the 3-D Secure flow on mobile devices.
- Tune fraud rules per market and track both fraud losses and false declines.
- Read the settlement terms: payout currency, timing, conversion fees and reserves.
Payment options on CIQRA
CIQRA stores can offer Stripe, PayPal, iyzico, PayTR, Param, Moka and bank card gateways, plus bank transfer and cash on delivery. Which of these fit depends on your markets and the providers' own coverage, so compare each provider's supported countries, local methods and settlement terms against the checklist above.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a different payment gateway for every country?
Usually not. Many PSPs support multiple countries, currencies and local methods through one integration. Some businesses add a second provider for a specific region where a local method or local acquiring is only available that way.
What is the difference between local acquiring and accepting a local payment method?
Local acquiring is about where a card transaction is processed, so a foreign issuer sees it as domestic. A local payment method, such as iDEAL, Pix or UPI, is a different payment rail altogether. A strong cross-border setup often uses both.
Does strong customer authentication apply to customers outside Europe?
SCA is a legal requirement under PSD2 for payments within the European Economic Area. Outside the EEA it is not legally required, although 3-D Secure is still available and the EBA-ECB data shows card fraud is much higher where authentication is not used.
Sources
- Global Payments (Worldpay), "Gen Z Driving the Shift from Cards to Digital Wallets, New Research from Global Payments Suggests" (Global Payments Report 2026), 2026. investors.globalpayments.com
- European Central Bank, "Joint EBA-ECB report on payment fraud: strong authentication remains effective but fraudsters are adapting," 2025. ecb.europa.eu
- Dutch Payments Association (Betaalvereniging Nederland), "Online payments," 2026. betaalvereniging.nl
- Ministry of Finance of Brazil, "Pix consolida liderança nos pagamentos digitais e projeta novas evoluções até 2030" (on Banco Central do Brasil's Relatório de Gestão do Pix 2023-2025), 2026. gov.br
- Press Information Bureau, Government of India, "UPI completes 10 glorious years, Emerges as World's Largest Real-Time Payments Platform, Anchoring India's Digital Economy," 2026. pib.gov.in
- Baymard Institute, "Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics," 2025. baymard.com