Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post comes courtesy of PayPal as part of their continued efforts to support the growth of Chile’s SMB community.
Brett McDowell, Sr. Manager of Ecosystem Security for PayPal—leader in electronic payments—shares 9 tips to help entrepreneurs and SMBs prevent cyberattacks.
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
Update 9 April 2013: PayPal Latin America and Multicaja, Chile will allow 50,000+ merchants in Chile, especially SMBs – that accept international payments via PayPal to withdraw their funds directly into their local bank accounts. The program called ‘Retiros Multicaja’, opens up PayPal international marketplace to Chilean e-tailers and e-commerce centric SMB’s, accessibility to 123 million potential consumers in 190 countries.
4 April 2013: Any foreign company or startup that has been trying do business in Chile would probably agree that one of the major headaches is figuring out how you are going to be able to receive payments (especially online).
While the news has not been officially announced, here’s hoping that Friday’s major announcement (here in Santiago, Chile) featuring Latin America PayPal, will set up the framework regarding simplifying online payments in Chile (and then some)!