How to Reduce Costs and Increase SaaS Payment Success Rates with Local Acquiring
Veröffentlicht: Oktober 13, 2025
To increase payment success rates and lower transaction costs for your online software business, use a local acquiring strategy for your SaaS. This is helpful because cross-border payments can lead to more expensive fees and higher transaction failures. This guide highlights a process that uses local acquiring payments, which can affect revenue streams and customer experience.
Strategize with a Self-Assessment to Define Your Process
Before implementing local acquiring, a detailed self-assessment can help you determine if it is the right approach for your business and which markets to put first. The plan involves shifting away from reliance on a single acquirer and selectively targeting regions that suggest a capacity for revenue growth. Answer these questions:
- Where are your customers located? Analyze your current customer data to identify the countries with the highest transaction volume. A SaaS company with 50% of its revenue coming from the European Union should focus on European markets first.
- What are your current payment success rates by country? Look at your existing analytics to pinpoint markets with high decline rates. A common reason for failure in these markets is cross-border processing issues, which local acquiring can solve.
- What is the average transaction value in each market? Higher transaction values in a market amplify the impact of both successful payments and failed ones. The impact of a 3% authorization rate variation differs between a $500 monthly subscription and a $10 one-time payment.
- What are the local payment preferences? In many markets, local payment methods (LPMs) are more popular than international credit cards. For example, over 70% of the population in Brazil uses Pix, an instant payment program.A local acquiring strategy can integrate these preferences, potentially affecting conversion rates.
A SaaS Company’s Data Analysis
|
Land |
Transaction Volume (Monthly) |
Average Decline Rate |
Main Decline Reason |
|
USA |
$500,000 |
2.5% |
Soft declines (insufficient funds) |
|
Deutschland |
$150,000 |
7.0% |
Cross-border declines |
|
Brasilien |
$80,000 |
12.0% |
Cross-border and payment method issues |
Based on this table, Germany and Brazil are the priority markets for a local acquiring strategy due to their high decline rates.
Free SaaS Local Acquiring Checklist
A step-by-step checklist to increase payment success and reduce costs for your SaaS.
-
Evaluate your current payment process
-
Find the right payment partner
-
Implement smart payment routing
-
Reduce international declines
-
Boost your global revenue
-
Optimization and monitoring tips
Sammeln Sie Daten über Ihren bestehenden Kundenstamm
Instead of establishing separate relationships with banks in every country, which can be complex and time-consuming, partner with a global payment provider that offers local acquiring as part of a unified platform. A single interface is used for transaction management with this approach.
Types of Payment Partners
When choosing a partner for local acquiring, it’s important to understand the different models available:
- Zahlungsdienstleister (PSPs): A PSP provides the technology to process payments but the merchant retains all legal and financial liability. While a PSP can facilitate local acquiring, your business remains responsible for managing compliance with regional sales taxes, VAT, establishing local entities, and other regulations.
- Merchants of Record (MoR): An MoR, like PayPro Global, acts as the legal entity and handles the sale of your product to the end user. The MoR takes on the responsibility and liability for complicated things like global tax collection, legal compliance, fraud prevention, and managing chargebacks. For SaaS companies trying to develop their product and increase their growth, this model helps influence the allocation of resources when selling internationally.
- Direct Local Acquiring: This allows you to establish your own legal entities and bank accounts in each country bypassing resource-intense tasks and decreases funding in legal and financial expertise. Thismodel is well suited for very large, high-volume businesses with a dedicated global payments team.
PayPro Global’s platform facilitates local acquiring via its Merchant of Record model.
By managing the legal and financial aspects of each sale, PayPro Global may affect the need to establish local business entities or register for tax IDs. This may influence the time and resources needed for internationale Expansion.
Unified Platform: A single dashboard allows for the management of global transactions, subscriptions, and financial data, potentially impacting operational complexity. This single integration affects the management of disparate systems across different regions by potentially consolidating them.
Local Payment Methods (LPMs): PayPro Global supports over 70 payment methods and 140 currencies, potentially affecting customer trust and conversion rates by offering local options.
A study by Oxford Economics found that just 20% of companies have direct access to a local acquirer in their key global markets, highlighting the challenge of a DIY approach.
Free SaaS Local Acquiring Checklist
A step-by-step checklist to increase payment success and reduce costs for your SaaS.
-
Evaluate your current payment process
-
Find the right payment partner
-
Implement smart payment routing
-
Reduce international declines
-
Boost your global revenue
-
Optimization and monitoring tips
Implement Intelligent Payment Routing
Upon integrating with a provider such as PayPro Global, their payment routing systems become available. This technology automatically directs each transaction through a channel selected based on potential success rates and cost.
The role of Intelligent Payment Routing:
Intelligent payment routing, also known as dynamic transaction routing, is a sophisticated process that selects the optimal path for a payment based on real-time data. The system’s algorithm considers multiple variables, including:
- Acquirer Performance: It analyzes the historical success rates of different acquiring banks for specific card types and regions.
- Issuing Bank Familiarity: The system favors routes where the acquirer and the customer’s issuing bank have an established relationship.
- Kosten: It considers the transaction fees associated with each route to minimize costs.
- Latency: It selects the fastest route which can impact customer experience.
PayPro Global’s smart payment routing system is intended to affect approval rates within its Global Payments solution. It analyzes various factors in real-time to select the best processing route.
Dynamic Routing: The system routes transactions based on factors such as country, card type, and issuing bank, which may influence the approval rate. For example, a payment from a German customer using a domestic debit card will be routed through a German acquirer, appearing as a domestic transaction to the issuing bank. This reduces the risk of a decline associated with cross-border payments.
Automatische Wiederholungen: If an initial transaction attempt fails, the system can automatically retry the payment using an alternative gateway or a different route. This feature is associated with the recovery of revenue that would not have been captured. Reports indicate that strategic retries can improve payment acceptance by 3% for recurring payments, a critical factor in reducing SaaS churn.
The transaction decline rate for a SaaS company with a large Brazilian user base was previously recorded at 12%. Many failures were due to a lack of familiarity between its US-based acquirer and the Brazilian issuing banks. Using PayPro Global’s routing, the company can process payments domestically.. This could result in a 5-15% fluctuation in the authorization rate for these transactions, which may correlate with revenue changes.
Schlussfolgerung
Local acquiring implementation relates to a SaaS business’s financial performance, potentially influencing payment success rates and cost reduction. A global payment provider, such as PayPro Global, that offers a unified platform helps companies address the difficulties of international SaaS payment processing. This approach allows companies to expand their international presence while maintaining a reliable and cost-effective payment infrastructure.
FAQ
-
Local acquiring is a payment method where your business processes a transaction through a financial institution in the same country as the customer. In contrast, cross-border acquiring involves an acquirer in a different country, which can lead to higher fees and increased payment declines due to foreign transaction flags.
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Local acquiring helps SaaS businesses increase their payment approval rates, which can be crucial for recurring revenue.It also reduces transaction costs by avoiding cross-border fees and can improve customer trust by offering familiar payment methods.
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A Merchant of Record is a type of payment partner that acts as the legal reseller of your product. An MoR like PayPro Global handles the complexities of local acquiring, including global tax compliance, legal liabilities, and local payment regulations, so you don’t have to.
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Yes. Since local acquiring makes a transaction appear domestic to the customer’s bank, it is less likely to be flagged as a high-risk international transaction. This helps reduce payment failures, which is vital for maintaining a steady stream of subscription revenue.
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Intelligent payment routing analyzes various factors in real-time to direct a payment through the most effective local channel. This technology automatically selects the optimal acquirer to maximize transaction success rates and minimize costs.
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Doing it yourself requires you to establish legal entities and bank accounts in every country you sell in. This is a complex, time-consuming process that involves managing multiple banking relationships, adhering to different regulatory frameworks, and handling various reporting standards.
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