UPS rolls out Global Checkout to help rid customers of unexpected import charges

Atlanta-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider UPS introduced a new offering today, focused on enabling global consumers to simplify the process of buying online from shippers.

The new offering, UPS Global Checkout, addresses issues consumers face when making global online purchases, particularly an additional bill for unpaid import costs, which UPS called “an unpleasant surprise.” To that end, the company explained that through UPS Global Checkout, UPS is able to guarantee upfront the amount being paid in duties, fees, and taxes by online shoppers, ridding them of unexpected costs upon delivery.

“With UPS Global Checkout, we’re making international shopping around the world as easy as buying in-store,” said Kate Gutmann, EVP and president of International, Healthcare and Supply Chain Solutions at UPS, in a statement. “Online shoppers can now enjoy full transparency and peace of mind with no surprises, knowing what they pay at checkout is the total cost for a cross-border purchase. This, combined with our total UPS premium delivery experience, benefits our customers—the retailers—by helping to drive additional sales.  Given trade shifts around the world, expanding growth opportunities in new markets can now be seamless.” 

UPS Vice President of Strategy for Europe and the Americas Kiel Harkness told LM that the problem UPS is trying to solve for its customers with UPS Global Checkout is neither new, nor something which recently emerged.

“On the front line or in regional offices, the story from our customers that we serve is very consistent, in that businesses see cross-border as a growth strategy,” said Harkness. “I think there's been a lot of enablers that have helped businesses grow into selling internationally—e-commerce is the first one. It is easier to set up a web shop now, and you have payment rails out there helping with currency. But what our customers have told us for some time is that the logistics and getting duties, taxes, and fees right is tough. They know the rewards of opening up new markets, but when they think about the risks associated with entering new markets, getting the price wrong or getting the rate that they're going to charge their customers wrong because they got duties, taxes and fees wrong, is not something that many businesses are willing to take on. So, they pause and don’t go forward their international expansion, which is bad for them and bad for us—and we put some work into creating certainty around that risk they perceived.”

In terms of the problems UPS Global Checkout can solve, Harkness said there is a lot companies can do to sell internationally, but they don’t want to take the risk of getting duties, taxes, and fees wrong. He also said that UPS serves many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) that don’t have the working capital in their businesses to get it wrong. From a transactional perspective, he noted that with every order across up to 200 countries UPS delivers into from 43 different countries it serves as an origin, every transaction in customers’ web checkout carts, via an API integration, gets guaranteed duties, taxes and fees. Which Harkness called a “huge unlock” for those customers that have seen that growth opportunity cross-border but couldn't take the risk.

When asked about the technology behind UPS Global Checkout, Harkness explained that it is a dynamic rating engine that is updated in near real-time, so as changes happen, whether it's regulatory or tariff related, the engine is updated, followed by accurate quotes passed back into customers’ checkout carts. He called this a peace-of-mind process, in that knowing if a retailer wants to change the price for a product—using a water bottle as an example—it is selling, from one day to the next, it changes the duties and taxes owed, much of what is based on the value of the sale.

“The ability to dynamically take in changes in the sellers’ variables in the checkout cart is what we do all in real time, and that's the certainty and confidence of the Guarantee,” he said. “We see this as a win-win, because we have that shipper who is our customer and we’ve just kind of broken down that barrier. But now they can offer their international buyers a kind of a frictionless, surprise-free purchase experience.

In the world of cross border e-commerce, there are many people out there who buy goods every day and have had an experience when that water bottle shows up in Australia, for example. But they get a surprise fee attached to it from a UPS driver, or maybe it's a letter from the country's customs brokers that shows up later, and they were completely surprised, and didn't know they were going to owe money. This makes it surprise-free, and their buyers get the positive and frictionless experience of knowing that the price they pay that day is all that they will pay.”

In addition to total guaranteed total landed costs, other benefits of UPS Global Checkout, cited by UPS, include:

• Enhanced customer experience: No surprise charges at delivery, leading to increased customer satisfaction and encouraging repeat purchases;
• Data-driven accuracy: UPS Global Checkout uses artificial intelligence to assess items in the shopping cart and calculate the correct duties and taxes; and
• Peace of mind: Helps businesses more easily comply with international duties and tariffs

Harkness said UPS Global Checkout is available to customers via an API integration, which is now live. Looking ahead, though, he said that UPS will continue to expand UPS Global Checkout’s accessibility to e-commerce platforms and plug-ins, as it moves forward with the roll-out, and also within its Worldship software in May.

“I think the value proposition right in the engine is constant, but making it available and accessible across different channels is a great opportunity for Global Checkout,” he said. “This will be the only guaranteed landed-cost option that is fully integrated and embedded into the carriers’ ecosystem. Global Checkout costs sit in the shipping flow for a customer [though API integrations and Worldship in May], and then something really important for our customers who like our visibility options, Global Checkout will be available through our visibility tools and will sit in one UPS bill and one UPS invoice.”

UPS cited data from a 2024 survey polling U.S. and U.K. consumers, which found that 41% of respondents were reluctant to make purchases from a global e-commerce site if the amount of duties and taxes were not made 100% at checkout.