General Questions

Multi-Currency Transactions

Using Multi-Currency in CyberCom Pay is easy. First, you need to decide which foreign currencies you are going to support.

We currently support the following currencies:

• Australian dollars (AUD)
• Canadian dollars (CAD)
• Euros (EUR )
• Great British pounds (GBP)
• South Korean won (KRW )
• Singaporean dollars (SGD)
• Chinese Yuan (CNY)
• United States dollars (USD )
• South African rand (ZAR )
• Hong Kong dollars (HKD)
• Japanese yen (JPY)

There are a number of things you need to be aware of when working with multiple currencies.

Besides factoring the economic climate and its impact on your product pricing, you should also know that the foreign exchange conversion rates can fluctuate quite dramatically in a matter of hours.

Before you can start using this feature, you must turn it on from the Settings section by going to Settings > Update Details.

No Additional Cost

It does not cost you anything to use the Multi-Currency feature in CyberCom Pay Checkout.

Typically when customers from overseas purchase your products and pay you in NZD, their bank charges them a (sometimes hefty) foreign exchange conversion fee. This is sometimes quite of-putting for international customers doing business with kiwi companies.

However, with CyberCom Pay Checkout’s multi-currency feature, the cardholder gets charged in the chosen foreign currency and that’s what shows up in their credit card statement.

They are not charged any foreign exchange conversion fees. As for you, the merchant, you are not charged any foreign exchange conversion fees either.

When a customer pays you in USD, you are simply settled the equivalent amount (as per the latest rate at the close of business) in NZD.

Checking the latest FX rates

Within the merchant console, you will be able to see the most up to date and current foreign exchange rates applicable to your account.

Once you’ve logged in, click on the “Exchange Rates” link across the top (above Merchant Tools and to the left of Settings).

The rates shown on that page are refreshed every hour, however, at the time of transaction, the rate applied might be different.

Rate calculation

Foreign exchange rates are calculated on the basis of the rates provided to us by our banking partners.

In New Zealand, all the banks seem to have identical exchange rates at any given time and the rates we display inside the merchant console follow the same vein.

Exchange rates come into play at two points during a transaction:

1. When your customer is paying you online and chooses a different foreign currency in which case the amount of dynamically switched to the best available FX rate at the time
2. When funds are being settled into your bank account, in which case, the 4.30 pm rate for the day is applied to all transactions for the day.

Remember, at the point of transaction, currency rates are changed instantly and dynamically using the most current exchange rate available to us at the time.

Transaction receipts

The receipt shows which currency the transaction was made in, and the transaction value.

Impact on your settlements & reporting

Firstly, all foreign currency transactions are settled in NZD in your nominated business account as per the normal settlement timeframes and procedures.

Because settlement only happens on a daily basis (end of day, 6pm cut-off), the last updated exchange rate is used to determine the most accurate settlement amount.

So if throughout the day you have made 10 transactions in USD, 5 in AUD and 5 in CAD, all those transactions are going to be settled as per the standard settlement procedures and timeframes based on the USD, AUD and CAD exchange rates as of 4.30 pm the day the transactions took place.

Transaction Reporting

During the day, if you log into your merchant account, you will still see transactions in NZD but for those transactions that were made in a foreign currency, you will see an icon indicating the currency the transaction was made in.

So to keep reporting and accounting simple and easy for you, the merchant, CyberCom Pay Checkout shows all transactions in NZD.

Please note that the actual settlement amount for foreign currency transactions may differ from what is shown in the transaction reporting and dashboards throughout the merchant console.

The actual settled amount is not known until settlement has been done.

Treatment of refunds treated in multi-currency

All foreign currency refunds are processed in the original currency they were processed in. However, your account will be debited the NZD equivalent amount and may sometimes end up being greater or less than the original amount due to foreign exchange rate fluctuations.

Learn more about how to process a refund