Programs such as internationally recognized Start-Up Chile and Chile’s new portal for incorporating a business (online) in just one day is making it easier for the world to do business with Chile. While PayPal Latin America and Multicaja’s new partnership is working to make it easier for Chile to do business with the world.
Their newly launched program ‘Retiros Multicaja’ (announced April 5, 2013) will allow SMB’s in Chile to transfer money from their PayPal account and deposit it in their local bank account and withdraw it in Chilean pesos. It also significantly expands Chilean SMB’s prospective client base as they can now accept payment from 193 countries and access 128 million consumers who might be able to benefit from their product or service.
While this news may not seem ‘exceptional’ for most businesses especially those in North America or Europe, this is a very big deal and ‘win’ especially for emerging economies in Latin America.
Cross-border transactions are tough, especially when an emerging market is involved, regardless of whether the transactions are initiated from within or outside. Using credit and debit cards online is too risky for many buyers in developed markets such as U.S. and UK, and it is even more so in emerging markets where online fraud is much more common. PayPal comes in handy with its buyer protection which is typically much more user-friendly than dealing with card issuers and merchants.
-Terry Xie, Mercartor Advisory Group