Visa Currency Conversion

Introduction to Visa Currency Conversion

Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) enables you to offer international customers their choice of payment currency when their billing currency differs from your local pricing currency. To use DCC, you and your acquiring bank must both be able to accept the cardholder's billing currency.

Visa and Mastercard both support currency conversion. These card networks regulate DCC to ensure that cardholders are aware of conversion rates and markups at the time of DCC transactions.

This guide describes how to integrate the DCC service into your order management system using the REST API.

DCC Scenario

Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) makes international commerce more convenient for customers. For example, consider this scenario:

1. A European cardholder uses a card billed in Euros (EUR) to purchase a box of chocolates priced at 150.00 in Australian dollars (AUD) from an online merchant based in Australia.
2. At checkout, the merchant offers the cardholder the option to pay in the EUR currency.
3. The merchant uses DCC to convert the transaction amount from 150.00 AUD to 109.04 EUR.
4. The merchant presents the converted transaction amount in the EUR currency to the cardholder. The exchange rate of 0.73 (1 AUD = 0.73 EUR) includes a 3% DCC markup over the wholesale exchange rate. The merchant must disclose the 3% markup to the cardholder.
5. The cardholder chooses DCC and agrees to pay 109.04 EUR for the box of chocolates.

Multi-Currency Pricing (MCP)

Multi-currency pricing (MCP) enables you to display charges and process transactions in multiple currencies based on the cardholder's location or preference. You can use MCP to manage revenue streams in a variety of currencies for any international industry including e-commerce, SaaS, travel, and finance.

Terminology

Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) — Service where the payment application performs a DCC eligibility and currency conversion service request during checkout, prior to an individual transaction authorization. If the transaction is eligible for DCC, the price is converted from the local pricing currency to the cardholder's billing currency for eligible transactions and the consumer is presented with a choice to pay in the merchant's local pricing currency or in the billing currency of their credit card.

DCC billing currency — Currency in which a card is denominated and in which transactions are posted in the cardholder's account.

DCC capture service — The DCC capture of an authorized DCC transaction. A capture can be cancelled.

DCC markup — The commission added to the transaction price at the time of the currency conversion.

DCC offer — The display of pricing options to the cardholder. The DCC offer must include disclosures as per Visa and Mastercard rules for DCC transactions. For example, an offer should identify the price in both the local pricing currency and the billing currency of the credit card, the exchange rate used to do the conversion, and any markups.

DCC offer service — The DCC qualification and currency conversion service.

DCC payment amount — Amount of the transaction in the cardholder's billing currency. The DCC payment amount is calculated using the wholesale exchange rate including the DCC markup.

DCC refund — The DCC refund of a captured DCC transaction which results in a refund to the customer. This can be full or partial refund. A refund can also be cancelled.

Exchange rate — Factor used to convert an amount in one currency to an amount in another currency. The exchange rate used for the DCC service is a wholesale exchange rate including a DCC markup.

Local pricing currency — The currency that a merchant uses for pricing your goods and in which transactions are typically submitted for processing.

Margin rate percentage — DCC markup.

Multi-currency pricing (MCP) — Service where a website is repriced in the currency of the cardholder.

Original amount — Amount of the transaction in your local pricing currency.