That is a bit of a flawed notion. Every payment gateway that I have encountered can happily take payments from any credit card it supports no matter which country the credit card holder is based in. The issue is which currency the payment is billed in.
So if you have a US based 'Merchant Services' account with a US bank, any payments taken from cards issued in other countries will be converted by your merchant services bank to dollars at their going rate for such exchanges and reflected in your account in the US. The card holder gets an amount in their own currency on their card statement.
After much nagging I did establish that ONE of the Chase Manhattan networks supports a currency code in its protocol to specify the transaction currency but no Merchant Services provider in the US will support a foreign currency merchant account which means that they always get their exchange fees. In fact no US bank that I spoke to will open a foreign currency account at all.
Banks in other countries however WILL open foreign currency accounts. So if you are a non US company taking payments from US customers in dollars (or from European countries in Euros), and you want to avoid having to exchange the currency for your own transaction by transaction, you can set up a merchant account in your country linked to a dollar bank account in your country.
Once you have a large sum in the account you can exchange it at contract rates which may be better.
Regards
Richard
