Multi-currency pricing on Shopify

Selling in several currencies is a Markets setting and a pricing strategy. The setting takes ten minutes. The strategy decides whether your margin holds.

Two currencies, and the difference matters

Presentment currency — what the customer sees and is charged.

Settlement currency — what you actually receive after conversion.

They're different fields, and confusing them is the classic multi-currency reporting bug: a revenue report mixing presentment and settlement amounts is simply wrong. Decide which your business reports in and be consistent — getting data out of Shopify.

Automatic conversion

The default. Set prices in your base currency and Shopify converts using the current exchange rate.

What it gets you: one price to maintain per product, and prices that track the market automatically.

What it costs you:

• Ugly numbers. €1,247.38 on a shelf reads as a conversion, not a price.
• Drifting margin. Your net revenue per sale moves with the exchange rate, in both directions.
• Prices that don't match local expectations. Markets have price psychology — the number that feels right in one currency isn't a conversion of the number that feels right in another.

Rounding rules

The first fix, and it's a setting rather than work. Choose a rounding rule per market — round up to the nearest whole unit, or to .95, or to .99.

€1,247.38 becomes €1,249.95. Same effort, dramatically better presentation.

Turn this on for every market. There's no reason not to.

Explicit prices where it matters

The second fix, and the one that actually protects margin.

Set prices manually per market for:

• Your top sellers. The products carrying the revenue.
• Anything near a psychological threshold. €99 versus €101 is not a small difference.
• Markets where competitors set the expectation.
• Anything with thin margin, where exchange movement matters.

The long tail can stay on automatic conversion. You don't need to hand-price three thousand products; you need to hand-price the fifty that matter.

Prices per market are set in the admin or via the API, and if pricing is calculated in an ERP, that's where the calculation belongs — the ERP owns price, Shopify reflects it.

Payment and settlement

Which currencies you can settle in depends on your payment provider and where your business is registered. Selling in six currencies and settling in one means conversion happens somewhere, and somebody charges for it.

Check what your gateway charges for cross-currency settlement before assuming multi-currency is free — payment gateways.

Taxes and duties

Prices per market interact with tax treatment. A tax-inclusive market and a tax-exclusive one showing "the same" price are showing different numbers to the customer.

Decide per market whether displayed prices include tax, and price accordingly — tax setup. And decide whether you collect duties at checkout: collecting costs conversion, not collecting produces a surprise bill at the door.

Refunds

A refund is processed in the presentment currency. If the exchange rate has moved since the order, the amount you're out is not exactly the amount you received. Small per order, noticeable at volume, and worth your accountant knowing about.

What to test

Per market:

1. Prices display in the right currency, rounded sensibly.
2. Your manually-priced products show your price, not a conversion.
3. Tax displays as intended.
4. Checkout charges the displayed amount.
5. The confirmation email shows the same currency.
6. A refund returns the right amount.

Reporting

Two rules that prevent most confusion:

• Decide whether you report in presentment or settlement, write it down, and use it consistently.
• Never compare a report in one with a report in the other and conclude something is broken.

Turn on rounding everywhere, hand-price your top fifty products per market, and let automatic conversion handle the tail. That's ninety percent of multi-currency done properly.