International Checkout and Payment Methods: Where Your Expansion Wins or Loses Money
10% of cart abandonments are caused by missing payment methods, 21% by slow delivery. The statistics and country specifics to optimise your international checkout.
Laura Dominguez, co-founder LDMM Agency
7/25/20261 min read
When an expansion disappoints, people usually look for reasons in the marketing: wrong targeting, wrong creatives, wrong channel. In our experience, the most expensive spot in an internationalisation sits much further down the funnel: at the moment of payment.
Cart abandonment statistics you can't ignore
The Baymard Institute, the global reference on checkout optimisation, puts the average cart abandonment rate at around 70% of all baskets. Among the avoidable reasons for abandonment, two matter enormously in an international context: 10% of shoppers abandon because their payment method isn't offered, and 21% because delivery is too slow.
Those percentages sound modest until you set them against the traffic you are paying for. Every visitor who reaches your checkout has already cost acquisition money. Losing them at this stage means funding your local competitor's advertising.
Payment methods by country
This is where localisation becomes very concrete. In Germany, according to the EHI Online Payment Study 2025, PayPal accounts for 28.5% of e-commerce revenue and invoice payment for 25.8%, followed by direct debit at 17.3%. Credit and debit cards, dominant in the UK and France, play a secondary role at roughly 12%.
A brand that rolls out its "card-first" checkout to Germany therefore mechanically cuts itself off from a majority of buyers, without a single marketing dashboard raising the alarm.
Delivery and returns: the other deal-breakers
Payment is only half the story. Expectations around delivery times, shipping costs and returns policies are always benchmarked against the local standard, not your home standard. A delivery promise that is acceptable in one market can be a deal-breaker in another used to faster options. Display delivery times and return conditions clearly, in the customer's language: opacity at checkout is paid for in abandonment.
Want to know what your current checkout costs you on your target markets? Our e-commerce audits at LDMM Agency often start exactly there.
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