Currency Conversion and Exchange Rate – SHOPLINE Help Center

Currency conversion occurs during transactions, such as when making payments, issuing refunds, or receiving refund requests. The exchange rate used is always the rate at the time of the transaction.

You can view the transaction details in the order timeline and review the calculation method for the price of each product in each market.

Currency Definitions and Conversion

Your store operates with three types of currencies:

Supported currency: The currency used in your SHOPLINE admin panel. This is the currency you set prices for products and product multi-attribute settings in your primary market, and it is also the currency displayed in your reports.
Local currency (also known as customer currency or presentation currency): The currency that customers see in your store and use to pay for their orders at checkout.
Pay currency: The currency used by SHOPLINE when depositing funds into your bank account.

Currency Conversion Risks

Currency exchange rates are always subject to fluctuations. When there are delays in processing payments or refunds, the impact of currency conversion rates can result in potential financial losses or gains.

You may experience such losses or gains in the following scenarios:

Utilizing fixed pricing for markets
Capturing Payment
Processing refunds for orders
Dealing with customer-initiated chargebacks

Note: If you sell subscription products and offer them in multiple currencies, the conversion rate will remain consistent with a customer’s first order. For further details on subscriptions, refer to subscription.

Automatic Exchange Rate Conversion

When you sell in a market using the local currency, the prices in your online store will automatically convert to your customers’ currency and may change based on the current exchange rate.

Note: When shipping orders with local currencies, the item prices on the order will be converted to your store’s currency, which may differ from the total amount received due to fluctuations in the exchange market.

The price conversion method is as follows: multiply the store price by the currency conversion rate, add the conversion fee, and then apply the rounding rules of that currency (if applicable). The converted price includes the currency conversion cost.

For example, when converting a product priced at USD 10.00 to Euros, the converted price would be EUR 8.90, which includes the currency conversion rate and the conversion fee.

If rounding rules are enabled, the total fee will be rounded to EUR 8.95.

Manual Exchange Rate Conversion

You can manually set the exchange rates for different currencies in each market. This allows you to establish fixed prices for each market, rather than having prices fluctuate based on automatic exchange rates.

When manually converting currencies, there is a possibility of profit or loss due to variations between the manually set exchange rate and the current market rate.

Conversion fees apply to currency conversions. If you wish to include this fee in the manual rate, multiply the fee by the conversion fee of the country/region where your store is located. For example, if the conversion fee from USD to EUR is 1.5%, the calculation would be as follows: 0.90867 × 1.015 = 0.9223.

You can set manual conversion rates for markets listed in the Other markets. These rates are determined by the base currency you set in Settings > Basic Settings, regardless of whether the base currency differs from the supported currency used in the markets.

Manual conversion rates can’t be applied to your primary market.

International fixed prices will always take precedence over manual conversion rates. Manual rates only apply to products that don’t have international prices set within a market.

You can combine price adjustments with manual exchange rates. For example, if your product is priced in US dollars at USD 20 and you have set the rounding rules for all markets to round up to the nearest whole number, you can control the pricing for the Canadian market in the following ways:

Set a manual exchange rate of 1.3 to stabilize the CAD price, then apply a 20% price adjustment. The price calculation would be USD 20.00 × 1.3 × 1.2 = CAD 32.00.
Set a manual exchange rate of 1 and apply a 50% price adjustment to solely control the CAD price using the price adjustment. The price calculation would be USD 20.00 × 1 × 1.5 = CAD 30.00.
You can choose automatic exchange rates and apply a 50% price adjustment to the CAD price. The price calculation would be USD 20.00 × [current exchange rate] × 1.5. The price will fluctuate based on the current exchange rate and include a 50% price adjustment.

If you changed the base currency of a market or switched from manual conversion rates to automatic rates, the manual exchange rates will be disabled but not deleted. This means that if you restore the original market currency or re-enable manual conversion rates, the manual conversion rates will take effect again.

On the Markets page, you can set manual conversion rates for single country/region markets or multi-country/region markets where the local currency is turned off. For each country/region where you want to use manual conversion rates, create a single country/region market.

Steps:

From your SHOPLINE admin panel, go to Settings > Markets, and select the market where you want to add manual exchange rates.
In the Products and pricing section, click Manage.
Click Edit exchange rates.
Select Use manual exchange rates, enter the exchange rate, and click Complete.
Click Save.

Notes:

The Edit exchange rates button will only appear if you have chosen a non-store settlement currency.
In step 5, you can also choose to use automatic exchange rates instead of manual exchange rates to allow prices to fluctuate based on the automatic rate.

Capturing Payment

When you sell in local currency, the customer payment you receive is calculated based on the currency exchange rate at the time of charging your customer’s credit card. If you manually obtain the funds, the system will charge the customer’s credit card when you process their order, rather than at the time of order submission. The currency exchange rate may fluctuate during the period between authorization and manual fund acquisition, resulting in minor differences in the amount.

In your SHOPLINE admin panel, orders in different currencies will be converted into your store’s supported currency for easier sales reporting. The conversion value is an estimate before charging the customer for the order.

For example, if your store’s supported currency is USD and you sell in both USD and EUR, and a customer placed an order for a bookshelf with a price of EUR 90. At the time of order submission, USD 1 was equivalent to EUR 0.90.

Supported Currency Price	Customer Currency Price	Estimated Order Amount
USD 100	EUR 90	USD 100

After a few days, the currency exchange rate changed, and now USD 1 equals EUR 0.85. You charge the customer’s credit card for EUR 90. Due to the revised currency exchange rate, USD 1 is now equal to EUR 0.85, resulting in USD 98 for the EUR 90 charged. Hence, you will receive USD 98.

Supported Currency Price	Customer Currency Price	Acquired Amount Converted to Supported Currency
USD 100	EUR 90	USD 98

Refunds

There is often a time gap between when a customer creates an order and when they initiate a return. As a result, the converted amount you receive for the order may not match the converted amount you refund. We recommend refunding the full amount paid by the customer in their local currency. Keep in mind that due to currency conversion, you may experience some gain or loss. Learn how to process refunds when selling in local currency.

Chargebacks

When a cardholder initiates a chargeback, the currency conversion should be based on the exchange rate at the time of fund transfer, rather than the rate at the time of ordering.

SHOPLINE will convert the refundable amount and deposit the disputed amount into the cardholder’s account. We will then pay the bank on your behalf, deducting the refund amount from your next payment. You won’t be charged any fees for this currency conversion.

If you dispute the chargeback and resolve it to your satisfaction, the disputed amount will be returned to you, and the refund will be issued to you at the current conversion rate.

Learn more about handling chargebacks.

Selling and Settling in Different Currencies, and Selling in Local Currency

Most currency conversions occur between the customer’s local currency and your store’s supported currency. If your store’s supported currency differs from the payment currency, the conversion takes place between the customer’s local currency and your payment currency.