Stripe, the global financial infrastructure platform, has introduced a new feature allowing Nigerians to pay U.S. merchants in naira.
In a report from Benjamindada.com, the company disclosed that the new feature will allow Nigerian shoppers to pay for goods and services in naira, while merchants, such as U.S.-based retailer Amazon, will receive settlements in their home currency, the dollar.
“Previously, businesses needed to establish a legal entity in each country where they intended to accept payments, a requirement that often limited their global reach and led to high rates of cart abandonment by potential customers,” it said.
Stripe’s latest rollout eliminates this obstacle, enabling merchants to sell directly to Nigerian customers without the need to create a Nigerian company. However, as part of its beta launch, this feature is still only available to U.S. retailers, with settlements in USD.
“Online payments are, among other things, a conversion optimisation problem,” Stripe noted in its 2023 annual letter. The company has long recognized that the ability to pay in local currency is crucial for reducing cart abandonment and increasing revenue.
According to the Baymard Institute, which has tracked global cart abandonment rates for over a decade, 70 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned at checkout, often due to currency mismatches between the merchant’s pricing and the shopper’s local currency.
“By presenting prices in the local currency, Stripe aims to improve conversion rates for its merchants, enabling them to capture more sales and grow their businesses globally,” it added.
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