Accept credit card defined by currency

[goosenes]

I currently accept canadian and US currency on my site. My merchant account is US dollars only. I tried to limit that Canadian customers could not use credit card as an option, which works alright. I wish there was a way to allow them if they use US dollars. Where I really run into the problem that some of my American customers will elect to pay in Canadian Dollars and then it goes through on their card as US dollars. Is there a way to determine the option of paying by credit cardby the currency selected, or do I have to only allow US dolar payments. That is what I have done for now.

[kuroi]

This depends upon your merchant account provider and whether they offer accounts in USD and CAD, whether your payment module supports it and even (for at least one combination of the above), whether your business is based in the US or Canada.

If you share this information with us, hopefully somebody with experience of that combination will see your post and be able to help you.

[DrByte]

kuroi is right - we need more information in order to help you.

One thing you could do, depending on which payment module you're using, is force all transactions to be converted to USD before being submitted to the credit card system. That way, as long as you maintain correct exchange rates in your Zen Cart admin, the customer will be charged the USD equivalent of their purchase. You would need to add a disclaimer somewhere saying something like "all charges will be converted to USD before processing, and will be reflected on your credit card statement as USD".

example: product sells for $5 CAD, and your exchange rate in Zen Cart admin is 0.892, then you'll bill their credit card for $4.46 USD. When they receive their statement, they'll see a USD transaction of $4.46, plus an exchange rate charged by the credit card company, bringing the transaction close to $5.00, depending on the rate charged by the CC company.

If that's not acceptable, you could (depending on the module) prevent the module from being used if currency is CAD (with some special custom coding), or you could find a merchant account that lets you submit various currencies for processing and be completely rid of this problem.

[goosenes]

My merchant provider is Global Payments Canada. In order to accept multiple currencies, I would need to have one account for each currency I accept. As a gateway I use Payflow link, and it too works the same way. Right now I cannot justify the cost of holding the additional accounts. I am a Canadain company, but 95% of my business is done with the US. However my Canadain customers get very upset when I do not offer our home currency. Unless there is a decent gateway out there that deals with multiple currencies, deals with Canadian customers, and doesn't hold funds for an eternity. I certainly haven't found one yet, and I have done a lot of looking.

I have no problem with converting everything to US dollars before submitting to credit card company. I just do not have the knowledge to set it up. I am not to bad with the Zencart system, I did my own install and setup, but a programmer I am not.

[mhaggag]

One thing you could do, depending on which payment module you're using, is force all transactions to be converted to USD before being submitted to the credit card system. That way, as long as you maintain correct exchange rates in your Zen Cart admin, the customer will be charged the USD equivalent of their purchase. You would need to add a disclaimer somewhere saying something like "all charges will be converted to USD before processing, and will be reflected on your credit card statement as USD".

Right... that sounds like exactly what I am trying to do... but HOW do you do it?
My Zencart (new) installation is version 1.3.8a and I've configured my Linkpoint payment module OK ad it's working (it is a US-based merchant account, but most purchases on my zencart store will be in Euro).
Thanks for any help!

[DrByte]

You could alter the code where the currency and amount are submitted to the gateway by adding this function and calling it and reading the returned array for revised currency-code and amount:

  /**
   * Check whether user-selected currency is valid for this payment module, and apply any applicable currency conversions.
   */
  function getConvertedCurrencyAndAmount($amount, $applyFormatting = FALSE) {
    $gatewaySupportedCurrencies = array('USD');
    $gatewayPrimaryCurrency = 'USD';
    $myCurrency = $_SESSION['currency'];
    if (!in_array($myCurrency, $gatewaySupportedCurrencies)) {
      $myCurrency = $gatewayPrimaryCurrency;
    }
    global $currencies;
    $amount = ($amount) * $currencies->get_value($myCurrency);
    if ($applyFormatting) {
      $amount = number_format($amount, $currencies->get_decimal_places($myCurrency));
    }
    return array('currency' => $myCurrency, 'amount' => $amount);
  }