By Samir El-Sabini, Co-founder and CEO at Juni

The pandemic and increased digitisation has meant that ecommerce sales have soared in recent years. In the UK alone, retail ecommerce sales are predicted to reach 38% by 2025, while global ecommerce sales are currently sitting at 22% of total retail sales, up from 15% in 2019. This growing market has paved the way for SMEs to build their presence in the ecommerce space, with many eyeing up international expansion. With consumers expecting to spend $2.1 trillion on cross-border ecommerce by 2023, it’s undoubtedly an area that will provide many opportunities for SMEs in the years to come.

International ecommerce has many advantages, including easier expansion into foreign markets and shorter B2B sales cycles, to name a few. But for SMEs, financing internationalisation isn’t so easy compared with big, worldwide corporations that have the experience and reserves to manage international spend. For example, areas such as lack of funding and slow cross-border payments cause considerable obstacles for SMEs wanting to grow outside of their native country. To address these challenges, forward looking SMEs are considering different options outside of traditional banking systems.

Traditional banking vs digital banking

The main challenge for SME financing lies within conventional banking systems. Traditional banks are simply not doing enough to meet the international growth needs of SMEs today due to the lack of agility and flexibility of traditional bank accounts, and the lack of tailored products aimed at solving their specific needs. As a result, they are at risk of losing further market share to third-party fintech companies. SMEs are slowly starting to realise this too – according to a recent survey, while most SMEs still prefer to use traditional banks for day-to-day banking, 56% are using banking and payments fintech services for their specific financial needs.

The fact is that the agility, flexibility and data-driven processes required by SMEs to expand their business internationally no longer aligns with traditional banking systems – onboarding of new services is time-consuming, fees are often higher and online features that allow for quick transfer of funds may not be available. There is also the challenge of navigating costly Foreign Exchange (FX) and admin fees that can halt SME international business expansion altogether. For ecommerce businesses, this could potentially be a make-or-break opportunity for their survival if they are unable to expand into different markets across the world. So, how can ecommerce SMEs navigate this difficult lending environment while also saving precious funds?

The rise of the multi-currency infrastructure

One way to effectively manage spend across international businesses is through multi-currency infrastructure. Prior to digital banking, businesses generally needed to have a financial services foothold in each key market to be able to easily manage funds and avoid FX fees. But now thanks to the rise of digital multi-currency bank accounts, it’s even easier to accept and move payments in foreign currencies.

Previously with traditional banks, everything was converted into an account’s main currency along with inflated FX and/or admin fees. This means that when a customer pays in USD and the business account is in GBP, a large proportion of the sale is taken up by FX charges – not ideal for SMEs with squeezed budgets. But, with multi-currency accounts a customer will pay in USD and the account will simply accept the USD sale. Businesses can then decide if they want to move the money to a different currency and pay lower FX fees or hold onto the funds and spend in USD whenever it suits them.

The value in creating a multi-currency infrastructure for businesses in ecommerce means that there are more options for SMEs to get even more from their money, allowing them to quickly scale internationally. For example, with a multi-currency account, marketing through online adverts proves more cost-effective because businesses are able to allocate spend on specific ad networks or countries, in the appropriate currency. Managing spend for ads using a multi-currency account also means that ecommerce businesses can better manage the spend insights for campaigns that are specific to a region and channel more funds to the currencies that are delivering the best returns. And it’s not just spend that multi-currency accounts can better manage – SMEs can spend as much as 19% of their time on admin tasks and 17% of their time on accounting and finance related to these issues; lost time that could be better spent focusing on strategic priorities such as scaling up the business. With a multi-currency account, all finances can be viewed in one place, meaning less time is spent having to navigate around different accounts and working out what is spent where.

Next stop, going global

SMEs account for most businesses worldwide and are predicted to play an even bigger role in the worldwide economy in the next few years. So, it’s crucial for these businesses to not be limited by international financial burden, simply because traditional banks cannot accommodate their financial needs. To be able to expand internationally, businesses also need to be able to spend and manage money globally, and in as cost-effective a way as possible. By looking beyond traditional banks and towards more agile ways of international financing, like multi-currency account infrastructures and tailored loans, SMEs will not only survive internationalisation, but also thrive across the global market.