The internet knows no borders and neither do buyers. Between 2014 and 2018, the total number of global online shoppers jumped 36%, from 1.32 billion to 1.79 billion people, according to research firm Statista [1]. Those online shoppers increasingly want to buy things internationally, but there's a catch: They want cross-border transactions to feel just as simple as any other purchase.

Until recently, the received wisdom was that if merchants wanted access to an international market, they'd have to adopt its regional payment options. But this wisdom may no longer be true.

Braintree, a PayPal service, partnered with PYMNTS to survey 183 global enterprises in 10 countries to find out how they were optimizing their businesses cross-border. The data suggests that the strategy might be simpler than previously thought.

• Data and insights from real merchants and industry experts
• The most popular payment methods that customers demand
• A practical strategy for expanding into new markets

1. From "Number of digital buyers worldwide from 2014 to 2021 (in billions)," published July 2017 by Statista