$USD or local currency for international sales

March 9, 2009 8:55 PM

Currency for international transactions. Should I offer a pay-for-download in $US only or lots of currencies?

I am thinking about selling an item for electronic delivery. Ideally, I would sell it for $USD10 but I suspect that I would get more sales if it is listed as EURO10, 6GBP, 1000YEN, 14AUD etc. so potential customers can see what the price is in the currency they are most familiar. This leads to either daily updating or/and arbitrage as rates change. The third option is the ebay way, where an approximate value in local currency is displayed next to the $USD: $US10 ($AUD14.00).
Non-US mefites, and USians who have an opinion, what would be best.

posted by bystander to work & money (4 comments total)

I'm a non-USian who purchases a lot from US sites, or did so before the Australian dollar started nosediving. It makes very little difference to me if the local currency is displayed, because I do so much overseas purchasing that I keep the approximate conversion rate in my head anyway. People who are less familiar with overseas purchasing may have a different opinion, though.
posted by andraste at 9:29 PM on March 9

Offer it if your payment processor offers the option at a low to zero cost to you. Exchange rates can kill you, and doing foreign currency transactions on the fly seems like a tedious thing to try to do during this economy cycle.

I offered prices in currencies where I got a lot of business, but discovered that most of my clients used credit cards or paypal that used the native currency of the seller, and thus, I didn't really need the overhead of offering anything other than USD prices.

(Note that mine was a physically delivered product, and not an download, so YMMV.)
posted by dejah420 at 10:08 PM on March 9

I offered prices in currencies where I got a lot of business, but discovered that most of my clients used credit cards or paypal that used the native currency of the seller,

My credit card is happy enough using the native currency of the seller when I buy from other countries. Obviously, whether the conversion is done by my bank or the seller's payment processor, there are going to be extra fees involved. The reason I have my bank do the conversion is because they usually have the lowest fees.

That said, it could be worth offering prices in other currencies when you detect a buyer from those regions, if only so that they realise right away you're all set up for non-US buyers. Also, I don't know if the cheap foreign-currency transactions my card offers are a feature of all credit cards; other people may get charged higher fees by their banks than I do.
posted by Mike1024 at 1:37 AM on March 10

Charge in USD, but show equivalent prices in major currencies.
posted by devnull at 1:40 AM on March 10