Websites that sell in multiple currencies...

Something that interests me is how websites cope with the changing exchange rates.

If you sell products in dollars and pounds and indeed euros as I see to be the case on many websites, do you update exchange rates all the time or simply take a little extra when the exchange rate is favourable and lose a little more when things change and the pound slumps.

For instance at the moment would you lower your US dollar prices as the pound has fallen or leave them where they have been?

Re : Websites that sell in multiple currencies

There is no absolute answer as it depends from site to site, and different ecommerce clients will have different requirements.

For larger ecommerce sites that do decent volumes of trades each day then they will tend to subscribe to a currency feed, this will set a variable of the exchange rate on a daily basis in their back end systems that will then set prices daily pro rata based on the exchange rate versus their base or default currency.

For those who set prices manually then they will tend not to update so often, unless of course there are drastic swings!
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Re : Websites that sell in multiple currencies

I guess if you sell in dollars as well as pounds at the moment - and are UK based - then you might need to be reducing the dollar prices on a daily basis!

However if people overseas aren't so aware of exchange rates then you could hang on and cash in at the higher prices

Re : Websites that sell in multiple currencies

As mentioned by Dan, most large sites will have a dedicated currency feed that automatically updates the pricing across the site for each currency that they trade in.

Re : Websites that sell in multiple currencies

I just take paypal at the moment, they convert for me at an incredably poor rate, and probably my customers also.
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Re : Websites that sell in multiple currencies

I have heard lots of horror stories on paypal.

There have been several times I have tried to pay with paypal on websites and mysteriously it won't accept my debit card.

Then when I try again a few days later it works fine. Goodness knows how much business companies are losing because of that that they never know about or realise apart from the 0.1% of customers that then email and tell them.

Quite how they've achieved global domination on that basis, and of course paying zero interest on the billions of dollars that they 'hold' for their clients, is a mystery!

Re : Websites that sell in multiple currencies

I wouldn't doubt that at all Startupbiz, Paypal is quite buggy at times. I use them because they do accept multiple currencies, but more so because they are such an established brand name of e-commerce, it lends trust to the customers on a website like mine they usually have not heard of.
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