[thelist] Multicurrency

[Glen Burnett]

I've implemented this kind of thing in a couple of sites and I store just
one product price in the database and also store the currency rates for 10
different currencies in another table in the DB.

The bank we use lets us charge foreign currency amounts in 10 different
currencies to a customer credit card and they make available their daily
rates as an xml document on their website for free.  Check out
http://www.bnz.co.nz/xml/currencySelect.xml  

Every day I have an automated process which runs and updates the currency
rates in the DB from the BNZ's xml doc.  No manual updating required.

Obviously this is a New Zealand bank but you might be able to find an
English one which offers their exchange rates in xml format for at least
your three main currencies?

Then, when a user views products on the site, the product price is always
calculated using the users prefered currency rate which they can change at
any time to one of the 10 currencies.

The cart and order tables store the product price and the exhange rate for
the customers prefered currency.

This does mean though, if a customer purchases a product in the morning then
by the time the money is settled into your merchant account overnight the
exhange rate may have moved and you will receive a little bit more or little
bit less than what you expected but in the long run it seems to work out
pretty even.

Cheers,

Glen



-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of john at johnallsopp.co.uk
Sent: Tuesday, 13 January 2004 3:48 a.m.
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] Multicurrency

Hi

I want to implement multicurrency on <www.tinshop.co.uk>.

.......