South African online shoppers can now shop on any Internet site in their currency of choice, by going through MyOrbital.com, which enables users to see the price of items in a customised currency.
Jaco Vermeulen, CEO of Orbital VX Corporation, says the service is a South African development that empowers international online shoppers to view and shop on any site, without tedious manual currency conversions and exchange rate uncertainty.
MyOrbital.com, he adds, is partnering with third-party global delivery solutions providers for orders originating from the US and UK, and will also provide a global delivery service from SA to international addresses.
"MyOrbital is independent from any site and requires no back-end plug-in to any merchant site. It doesn`t just provide a currency conversion tool or calculator, but actually converts entire Web sites that the shopper visits through MyOrbital.com."
He says the service was developed because of a need to shop for electronics and other products from US-based sites - where product ranges are often bigger and prices usually more than 50% lower than locally.
"But users were always faced with unreliable currency conversion information and the hassle of international delivery options. There are other currency converters available, but nothing that is able to convert entire sites."
Vermeulen warns that the site is still in the beta development phase, so some sites might not display correctly. However, development has been completed for the top 400 global merchant sites, which account for 97% of online shopping, he says.
MyOrbital is offered as a free service to users and the company makes its revenue through partnerships with online merchant sites, Vermeulen explains. The site was launched in December and has 3 000 registered users.
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