Dual Canada / U.S. dollar merchant accounts

[dkoehler]

Lots of payment processors (e.g., Moneris, Beanstream) are able to provide Canadian merchants with separate Canadian and U.S. dollar merchant accounts, which is helpful as many of us would like to be able to offer both Canadians and Americans the ability to pay in their native currency.

I'd like to use Zen Cart with such a setup but it's not obvious which, if any, of the payment modules will readily support the ability to process payments in either currency and direct it to the appropriate merchant account.

(For example, the Beanstream module readme file says, "This Beanstream module presently offers processing for only Canadian Dollar (CAD) transactions.")

I'm new to all this so perhaps there's an obvious solution. We haven't signed on with a payment processor yet so have some flexibility there if that helps.

Thanks,
Derek

[kobra]

Authorizenet and linkpoint are gateways that handle deposit to your bank merchant account from many currecncies

[DrByte]

I've not seen a company yet which allows processing/settlement in multiple currencies into a single bank account (which is itself only one currency).
The few which do offer multiple currencies all require multiple merchant accounts, linked to multiple bank accounts ... one in each supported currency.
The monthly costs for all those multiple pieces can get costly. But maybe it's worth it for some.

PayPal is one exception -- they readily handle multiple currencies out of the box.

To do it with Zen Cart, you'd have to configure multiple payment modules to detect which currency is in use, and then turn themselves on or off based on the currency selected. This would require custom coding to adapt the modules to your requirements.

[dkoehler]

I'd be willing to set up two merchant accounts, one for Canadian and one for U.S. dollars, so it's really the problem of getting both to work with Zen cart that's my concern (and I'm not really skilled enough to do custom coding).

What about setting up two separate stores, one for Canadian dollars and one for U.S., and letting people choose which to enter? Then, set up an off-the-shelf payment module for each? Only problem I know of there is finding a payment module that can readily work in either currency--but at least it wouldn't have to decide which merchant account to use, as there would only be one tied to each store.

Thanks again for any advice,
Derek