6 Replies Latest reply: Aug 13, 2012 3:13 AM by KevPohl RSS

    Convert on-page currency

    KevPohl Community Member

      I am in South Africa, and many of our small business startup clients would like to create an online store to sell goods to other south africans, but because merchant accounts are difficult to get and very expensive on setup fees, they would like to use PayPal to sell their goods instead.

       

      Problem is, PayPal only recently allowing south africans to receive & send money, does not yet support selling goods in our native "South African Rand" or "ZAR" currency.

       

      We can sell goods in "USD", but it is law here that you have to sell or at very least show the native currency.

       

      I could use money.js to just convert the display value on the webpage, But in hope of improving the user experience on ecommerce sites.

       

      I was hoping that there would be a way to setup my BC site as a south african site, enter all my products in our native currency, use PayPal standard as my gateway, and then have a script convert that rand value to "USD" in the processing phase when checkout has been clicked, so that PayPal will process the supported "USD" value.

       

      If this was possible, then users would only ever see the "ZAR" (Rand) value of the goods on the website, but as they checkout to PayPal, the payment goes through in "USD".

       

      note: There are Wordpress developers that have created a plugin for Wordpress that can do this for any currency.

       

      Can anyone please provide me with some assistance? Or point me in the right direction? If any devs could help out, I would be willing to contract you for such a job.

       

      Many Thanks!

        • 1. Re: Convert on-page currency
          mario_gudelj CommunityMVP

          Hi Kev,

           

          On BC you can not do any adjustments to the  currency or the amount with Javascript. Everything is done server side, using the country assigned to the site URL. So, make sure that under the Site Settings > Manage Domains your URLs/domains are set to ZA. If so, the currency sent to PayPal should be Rand. Make sure that you have Rand setup as a default currency at the PayPal's end.

           

          Cheers,

           

          -mario

          • 2. Re: Convert on-page currency
            KevPohl Community Member

            Hi Mario,

             

            Thanks for the feedback, but you seemed to have missed the point that PayPal does not accept any payments in Rands...

             

            I contacted support a while ago with this request as I myself thought that everything happened server side, but they turned me down and told me to go to the forums where someone might help. So now I'm wondering if they just gave me the run-around.

             

            If wordpress can so easily be implemented like this with a plugin, why can't BC offer us other countries a way of doing this as well? This is supposed to be a global platform, but there is only one payment gateway for south africa, and it is the most expensive one around.

            • 3. Re: Convert on-page currency
              Liam Dilley CommunityMVP

              Does the wordpress thing you could use offer garunteed security, comes with the security certificate and ensures a high level of PCI compliance Kev? Coupled with other things such as the CRM, Email Marketing..... etc ?

              • 4. Re: Convert on-page currency
                KevPohl Community Member

                Ok thank you Liam, that was very insightful but I'll stop you right there before you turn this into another thread about how great BC is. I don't need to be sold on BC, I'm a premium partner.

                 

                What the hell good is any of the other features anyway if none of our clients can use the one deal breaking feature that is eCommerce. They would like to use BC, but as limited as the eCommerce engine is, the fact that they cannot use a more popular payment gateway, or one that they already use, or get a workaround that some of them already use on Wordpress, is just too much.

                • 5. Re: Convert on-page currency
                  Liam Dilley CommunityMVP

                  The point is, you got the request in, that is all you can do. You now need to look at other options like using a different payment gateway for that currency etc.

                  • 6. Re: Convert on-page currency
                    KevPohl Community Member

                    Ok, Adobe Business Catalyst only supports ONE (1) Payment Gateway in South Africa. This ONE (1) specific gateway, is way too expensive for most customers, especially smaller, new businesses. Also, this specific payment gateway, requires: 1) That you have a merchant account with one of our banks, 2) Pay a hefty fee for opening the merchant account, 3) Pay a large amount monthly for maintaining the merchant account. Not to mention that the approval process for getting a merchant account is very strict, and you need to make a large amount of sales before they approve you. For smaller businesses, or one's just getting started, that is a complete deal breaker.

                     

                    So the alternative would be one of our other payment gateways that do not require a merchant account, But as BC only supports this very 1 gateway, that is obviously not an option. And seeing as PayPal does not support our currency, that is also very difficult to then use.

                     

                    There is for example an international payment gateway called 2Checkout, which would give South Africans an account with them, and they do not require a merchant account, But unfortunately BC does not support it either.

                     

                    So yes I might have asked support about this, But they blatantly turned me away. And hey guess what? The Wishlist has been decommissioned.... And what's that? Oh, new features need partner validation! Guess the lack of South African partners is really gonna help my cause over here. I've been asking BC for this or some sort of solution since early 2010.

                     

                    I don't think I even need to mention the amount of contracts we have lost due to the lack of this support.