Multi-Currency Conversion (MCC) and Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) are two options available on your payment terminal or gateway to accommodate international cardholders and give you a global cross border reach.
Multi-Currency Conversion -
- Support for over 90 currencies
- In Converge automatically assigned top 5 currencies (USD - US Dollar, CAD - Canadian Dollar, GBP - Pound Sterling, AUD - Australian Dollar, EUR - Euro, and JPY - Japanese Yen). Merchant can add or remove currencies from currency field setting.
- Available for ecommerce / manually keyed transactions
- Prices displayed in cardholder's currency
- Cardholder pays in their local currency, merchant is funded in their depositing bank's currency.
- Transaction authorizes and settles in cardholder's currency
- Prices converted back to USD/CAD (depending on deposit currency of merchant account) for funding to merchant
- Conversion occurs behind the scene
- Onus on the merchant to understand currency exchange rates between foreign (cardholder) currency and home currency rates.
- Benefits:
- Cardholder not involved in conversion
- Cardholder transparency on final cost of purchase
- Things to keep in mind:
- Auto settle has to occur at 6PM EST to ensure best exchange rate
- Manual settlement is not permitted
- Funded amounts wont show in Converge only on the merchant statement
Dynamic Currency Conversion -
- Available in 66 currencies
- Available for card present and keyed transactions
- Cardholder has the option to pay in their local currency or merchant's currency, merchant is funded in their depositing bank's currency
- Prompts cardholder with option to pay in their home currency or merchant's currency at the point of sale.
- Transaction amount converted from merchant's currency to cardholder's currency and displayed on the spot
- Conversion occurs at point of sale
- If accepted, transaction authorizes in cardholder's currency based on converted amount.
- No currency exchange risk for the merchant
- Benefits:
- Fewer chargebacks - cardholder aware of conversion
- Transparency to cardholder of rates and fees
- Better rates than money exchange places
**Notes:
- MCC and DCC are only available for Visa and Mastercard transactions
- Some 3rd party gateways (i.e. Authorize.Net) do not support MCC/DCC. A separate gateway account for each currency (i.e. CAD and USD) is required.
- A merchant account cannot support both (i.e. you can either have MCC or DCC on the account but not both)
- Some card issuers charge cardholders a fee for making a purchase at a business outside the issuing card's country, regardless of currency being the same.
- For example, a US cardholder purchasing from a Canadian company that has a USD merchant account and charges in USD.