We sell into Latin America, SE Asia and the Middle East and sometimes a customer will complete our standard credit application and sometimes all we get is their bank and trade reference sheet. In some respects I'd be more worried about not getting a signed credit application from a domestic account than I would from an international account. In my 20 years of doing this, I've seen more bad debt from domestic accounts than I've ever seen with international accounts. I believe part of the reason is cultural. We sell on open account to Singapore, China, the UAE, Latin America and the Middle East. I would sell on LOC if I had to, but we generally sell to the number 1 or 2 player in the region so open terms works for us. While I have seem some "after the fact" disputes it generally (in my experience) stems from not asking the right questions up front or not complying with their T&C, to the letter. I think this is more of a cultural thing than poor business practices. Generally internatinal consumers like US manufactured goods so once a market is established the importer gets easier to work with. But you can't treat everyone as if they were in the US.