International sellers can you help!

[artenligne]

I'm a new seller on this site. I've been selling on ebay for years and I've always accepted Paypal. However, Paypal doesn't accept rands. What's the solution? I sold a few items and just made the conversion to euros. Is there a better way? Should I get a merchant account to accept credit cards. I found a site called 2checkout.com, they accept rands. Would it be easier that way?

Thanking anybody who can help me in advance.

[BumbleBee]

There is a rumour that PayPal will be fully operational and accepting funds by April this year. I am not sure of the details.

[Technik]

Hi Artenligne - Welcome

These are my personal and first-hand observations and experiences with buying from international sellers on this and other auction sites.

Trying to do a wire-transfer is - to say the least - near impossible if you are a private person.

PayPal for us South Africans at this stage is a one-way street. We are able to have an account and make payments via PayPal (which works well and easy enough) - BUT - we cannot receive payment and legally transfer those funds back to our South African bank accounts (the methods/schemes to circumvent this is a major discussion on it's own, but I don't think relevant here).

So, once you (South African Citizen) have decided to venture into the relatively unknown of buying from an International Seller, accompanied by the - now heightened ten-fold - uncertainties of whether the sale will actually go through - you might as well use a payment system that will work for you both ways.

The payment system which I have found to suit my purposes the best are Moneybookers. The reason/s for this is that it works both ways - I can do an eft TO Moneybookers from my Standard Bank account, which is available in a day or two for international payments AND I can withdraw funds BACK INTO my Standard Bank account. I also have the option of direct payment via credit and/or debit card (if it's the type with a cvv number) similar to PayPal.

The fees are also reasonable - receiving money is free and you pay 1% of the transaction for payments, but never more than EUR 0.50 (ZAR 5.35) for payments and EUR 1.80 (ZAR 19.00) for withdrawals. It is also now an accepted payment method for that other auction site that forces people to predominantly use PayPal, which it owns. All transactions can be done in the currency of your choice - but defaults to the currency of the buyers home country - and ZAR is one of the recognised currencies.

There is also an escrow service through Moneybookers that can be used - offering buyers some peace of mind when buying from international sellers with low or no ratings.

Allthough not relevant to your question - You should also be aware of the import duties and local VAT that your buyers will have to pay in South Africa. Strange as it my seem, but these change drastically for like-type goods, depending on the mode of shipping. In my experience, UPS, FedEx and the mail-system of the sender's country of origin is the best to use - I don't exactly know why, but the import duties have been the most reasonable. On the other hand, when using other courier companies, the buyer can prepare itself for a major shock and the import duties and extra charges from the shipping/clearing agents can cost as much as the item that you have bought! The point of this information being - that in fairness to your customers, and to avoid a number of negative ratings at the onset - please make your customers aware of the fact that they should expect further charges when they collect their parcels at the local Post Office and/or before the delivery is made at their home by UPS/FedEx - as an indication, there is Customs Duty and Tarrif information for South Africa available in the internet.

Other than that - Good Luck and Voorspoed.

[artenligne]

Sorry for the late reply but thanks a lot for the info. I will look into Moneybookers and I'm suprised that the other auction site will accept moneybockers since they pretty much do what only interests them over there.

Thanks again.