I have the opportunity to use Shopify payments and it’s a perfect gateway. Nevertheless our customers also need to use a local gateway such as Payu LATAM or Mercado Pago, our store is distributing in colombia so, the main issue is that the 50% of our sales are made trough Shopify payments, the balance is made manually using other providers, I have to text our customers and send them a link that helps them to finish their purchase.
This is not a smart way to receive payments.
If we can offer Shopify payments and Mercado pago or payu LATAM as well, our store will run faster and even, we will reduce the abandoned cart rate.
I hope you can help me with this issue wich is really affecting our customers experience and ours as well
I am happy to hear that you are enjoying your use of Shopify Payments on your store, even if it is creating some extra steps for your customers at the checkout.
I would love to better understand what payment options are included with Mercado Pago or Payu LATAM that are not included with Shopify? Are there specific virtual wallets or alternative payment methods that customers from Columbia like to use outside of the major credit card providers?
I’m happy to pass this feedback onto our developers to further consider, but the more information I have the better that is.
There are a ton of payment methods that mercadopago and payu offer that shopify does not. I believe I read somewhere that only roughly 25% of Colombians have credit cards. And many debit cards here do not have CVV and cannot be used to make online purchases. It isn’t as popular of a payment method as in the US.
The majority of Colombians prefer to pay through bank transfers using a national system called PSE. This system also allows them to make payments through virtual wallet apps such as Nequi and Daviplata. Having access to that platform is essential for any business doing online transactions in Colombia.
In addition, there is a substantial amount of Colombians that prefer to make payments in cash through a chain of businesses called Efecty (which is the Colombian equivalent of Western Union.)
As a side note, I would like to mention that while the majority of Colombian credit card transactions made through Shopify Payments present no issues, every once in a while a customer would complain to us that we charged them in USD and in 36 monthly installments (even though our store currency is COP and Shopify Payments does not allow for payments in installments.) This leads us to believe that some credit card providers in Colombia recognize a transaction made through Shopify Payments to be an international purchase and, depending on the policies of the card issuer, they may split the payment into 36 installments by default (which means the customer ends up paying a ton of interest) and even charge the customer an additional fee for that international purchase. Needless to say, customers can get really upset about that so that is definitely a problem that Shopify should look into in the future.
For that reason, we stopped using Shopify Payments.