The MCM Outlook 2016 survey reveals that Canada is the leading country that U.S. merchants are selling to. This makes sense considering the 4,000 mile long border shared by the two countries, a common language, and daily border traversing for generations. But Canada wasn’t the only U.S. merchant buddy. The UK (31%), Australia (26.20%), Germany (23.80%), and Mexico (23.80%) are all top merchant buddies as well. This came as a shock to some analysts, who believed that at least a few of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) would make the list of the top 5 countries that U.S. merchants sell in. The MCM results were no surprise to U.S. merchants. Plus selling between both countries is predicted to get even more intense in the coming years.
Canadian retailers have always gotten a lot of their inventory from the United States. But since the value of the U.S. dollar has increased and the value of the Canadian loonie as declined, Canadian merchants have had to take drastic measures like reducing staff or raising prices to cut costs. In fact, 49 percent of Canadian retailers have had costs increase over 5 percent in the last year. To decrease costs, many Canadian retailers have swapped out American suppliers for domestic suppliers, which has had an impact on sales.
But this could all change really soon. This month, Canadian lawmakers introduced a new bill that places a ceiling on credit card interchange rates. Linda Lapointe, Liberal MP for Rivière-des-Milles-Îles, introduced a bill to make changes to the Payment Cards Network Act. Even though the bill does not state a specific cap rate, Canadian merchants are hoping that the new rate will help ease some pain at the POS. Recently, European payment authorities agreed to an interchange cap of 0.3%. Retailers are hoping to get a deal similar to the one in Europe.
Hopefully high risk Canadian merchants will enjoy decreased interchange rates in 2016. eMerchantBroker.com provides Canadian merchants with premium credit and debit processing services with reasonable fees. As many merchants struggle to cut costs, they’ll need access to powerful and convenient payment processing to grow their customer base. EMB will help high risk Canadian merchants exceed sales goals by providing a wide range of payment services. Open your Canadian merchant account today.