Understanding Shopify’s multi-currency setting

With multi-currency, Shopify customers are able to checkout in their currency and continue to be charged by the currency after their initial checkout. Only one currency can be used for an address and cannot be changed, since the currency for the customer’s address has been set during the initial checkout. If the currency of an address is not specified upon creation, the store’s currency is selected by default.

Multi-currency is partially supported by Recharge. This guide explains how Shopify’s multi-currency setting currently works with Recharge and any limitations that can arise.

There are ongoing efforts to develop and consolidate the multi-currency features offered by Recharge. For more information, see Recharge’s Multi-currency early release program. 

Limitations with Shopify multi-currency

When multi-currency in Shopify is enabled, Recharge does not prevent customers from using a different currency than the store’s currency to sign up for subscriptions. Multi-currency works in a limited capacity as partially supported in Recharge. The customer experience will differ depending on whether you opted into Recharge’s alpha/beta release program or have multi-currency enabled in Shopify.

If you have multi-currency in Shopify turned on, expect the following experiences with Recharge:

What works

• Customers can only successfully checkout in their own currency if you’ve designed a custom widget to pass the correct presentment currency through to Recharge. Customers are charged in the rate and currency used at the checkout.
• The Recharge merchant portal UI displays the correct currency and pricing.
• Percentage discounts work.

Current limitations

• Fixed amount discounts do not convert into the customer’s currency used during checkout.

  For clarity, if a discount was set up such as “5OFF” to reduce the price of the order by 5, it would not determine the different conversion for each currency. Customers who have subscriptions in EUR see their order value reduced by 5 EUR, in contrast to customers with subscriptions in MXN whose order value is reduced by 5 MXN.

• If you charge shipping, there might be minor discrepancies in the recurring shipping charges. The endpoint Recharge currently uses when retrieving data from Shopify for the shipping rate doesn’t pass US currency, causing minor charge discrepancies.
• Customers could see pricing issues when they add or swap their existing subscription.
• The customer portal UI does not reflect the correct currency unless you use the Theme Engine to customize the portal.
• Notifications do not reflect the currency in use by default and require custom coding.
• Duties information in Shopify is not reflected in the order data in Recharge. Customers are still charged correctly on a recurring basis, but order details and exports will not match.
• Adding a new shipping address from the merchant portal or customer portal does not allow currency selection. The store’s currency is chosen automatically.
• The correct currency symbol may not appear when using the Shopify 2.0 subscription widget. 

Recharge Checkout on Shopify

The Recharge Checkout on Shopify does not work with Shopify’s multi-currency feature. Orders submitted to checkout retain the price from the currency conversion but are processed using the store’s main currency. 

Early Release program

If you are interested in participating in our closed alpha/beta test, fill out the opt-in form for testing Multi-currency.

The release program is limited to a small group of merchants and this form doesn't guarantee your participation in the alpha or beta testing phases. The Recharge team will contact you with an invite if your store is in consideration.

Multi-currency Glossary

• Conversion Rate is the rate used to convert your store currency to the presentment currency.
• Customer Transactions is the currency the customer sees in their checkout order and what gets charged.
• FX Rate is the current market exchange rate. It is the pricing method used to surface presentment currency prices in the widget, the merchant portal and the customer portal.
• Presentment Currency is the currency that the customer uses when they pay for their orders at checkout.
• Store Currency is the main currency your store uses to set the prices of products and appears on your reports. This can be checked in Shopify by clicking Settings and Store Details.