Default currency

[elvisparsley]

I live in Norway and starting an online shopping website.
I am a bit confused what currency I should use for default currency.

I am going use VPASP and I have to set a default currency. Custmers' payment will be converted to the default currency and will be deposited to my bank account.

I talked with one gateway company in Norway and he suggest Euro. He thinks Norwegian kroner is not known internationally and also expensive.

But I don't really agree with it. If I get Euro then I have convert it to Norwegian Kroner again and the bank will charge it.

This will not apply if you live in US, UK, EU or Japan, because they are well known currencies.

Could you give your opinion how you are doing it if you are from small countries?

Thanks.

[marc77]

The Norwegian Krone really isn't well known... how is your shop working - does it provide an automatically updated currency conversion ? If so, you could configure it in a way to let your customers select their default currency the shop should use. Internally the payments are handled in NOK - this saves you money for doing conversions.

But I don't really agree with it. If I get Euro then I have convert it to Norwegian Kroner again and the bank will charge it.

There are payment processors who do such conversions automatically for you, without charging an extra amount. Unfortunately I could only state a German one we are doing business with, but likely there are one in Norway as well.

I also can tell you how we handle this: On http://www.sunnyscript.com (our CGI scripts resource website), we bill software licenses in Euro and USD, even equal amounts (which means that we currently have a high loss for US orders, but that's an other topic). On the long run, we plan to use a more accurate conversion providing conversion in multiple amounts, but we need to see how this develops first.

Maybe you can let me know how you finally decided :-)

[ECSuite_Russell]

What payment processors have you looked at?

I believe most have multi-currency options. You can set a price in your native currency and on the payment form have a drop down menu of foreign currencies for your customer to change the price point too, so they have an idea of the cost in numbers they're familiar with.

There's also regional pricing which allows you to set different price points in different currencies, this lets you take advantage of weak exchange rates. If the Krone is strong though that might not be a concern for you.