Currency exchange

HI I am a UK based E commerce high end, my supplier is based in the EU ( and therefore so are my prices). I would like to add a currency converter to my page in order to have live currency for the UK. I am not technical and do not have coding experience but have built my website.. any advice should I switch to another hosting site? 

Hi 

I absolutely love the squarespace templates. BUT my supplier is in Europe I'm in UK and so I need a converter  so I can demonstrate live prices. Also hoping to sell on global market. Any advice, I don't really want to leave this platform here but I'm not massively technical although I've built my website.

I don't know of any way of doing this without a plug-in. The one I use is shinypass (https://shinypass.com/), which allows you to do a *rough* approximation of pricing in different currencies via a drop-down menu. It's works pretty well and it's better than nothing, but it is just a rough currency conversion. It also requires a monthly subscription.

However, this is just a simple FYI for customers, when it comes to check-out they will still need to check out in whatever currency your store is set to. For example, I have a UK based store so it's set to GPB. Customers can select different currency conversions via the shinypass drop-down, but when they reach check-out they still see all prices in GBP and need to check out in GBP. This almost certainly leads to abandoned carts.

I'm not aware of any way of getting around this issue. We also have an Etsy store, which allows customers to view and check-out in their local currency. I understand this is also possible on Shopify sites, but I don't have one so can't confirm that.

Just another limitation of Squarespace as far as I can tell.

On 2/7/2024 at 9:30 AM, nmitchenere said:

I would like to add a currency converter to my page in order to have live currency for the UK...any advice should I switch to another hosting site? 

As @sussexseamstress0603 pointed out above, the Squarespace checkout is locked down and will always show prices in the site's default currency (EUR in your case). It cannot be changed. To be honest, this is far from ideal, and something I have continued to campaign for since Squarespace commerce was launched in 2013, but this isn't a priority for Squarespace to resolve.

The question of whether you need to switch will depend on whether you are able to live with this. Can you guide your customers through the purchase process to expect the checkout in another currency (EUR) or do you need customers to be able to pay in their own currency (GBP). If the latter, you'll need another platform. Shopify does support this but is way more complicated to configure and use. 

To be transparent, I'm a Squarespace developer and I also produce a currency tool for Squarespace called Currencies (which incidentally doesn't require a monthly subscription!). Currencies is a paid plugin (one-off fee) that accurately converts prices on store and product pages into your choice of other currencies, using up-to-date currency data. To avoid surprises at the checkout (where the currency cannot be changed, the plugin shows all prices in the user's local currency as well as the checkout currency. A clear and concise message is also added to store pages, wherever prices are shown, explaining that the checkout will use the default currency and that their card issuer will convert the transaction into their own currency (see example below). This helps to avoid any surprises when customers reach the checkout and find prices in another currency.

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@paul2009 oooh! Last time I checked your plugin (admittedly a ways back when trying to solve this problem) it was 7.0 only... didn't realise there was a 7.1 version now... however, in case you are not aware I just looked at the example sites you have there and when I select a different currency (GBP) some are displaying "GBPNaN" (e.g. little building company and  lage). I'm using Chrome on Mac if that is relevant.

@sussexseamstress0603 😳 Thanks for the heads-up, we'll update it. Sadly those are older sites that have an upstream issue with their third party currency conversion service.

@paul2009, thanks for your posts on this topic. It's good to hear that you have been campaigning for Squarespace to address this natively, and really sad that after 11+ years of Squarespace Commerce they still haven't addressed it. If a platform like Shopify can display local currencies all the way through checkout, it seems insane to me that Squarespace would not offer/address this.

I've sent an inquiry about Currencies pricing/timeline via the sf.digital site. Hoping to implement it on a site I'm building right now.