WPC Multi Currency for WooCommerce (Premium)

Showing the price in their currency is not charging in their currency

This is the misunderstanding that generates the most refunds in shops starting to sell abroad. A converter gets installed, the visitor from Mexico sees pesos, the one from Colombia sees Colombian pesos, and everybody assumes the charge goes through in that currency too.

It does not. The charge is settled by your gateway in whatever currency you configured with it, usually your own country's. The buyer's bank receives a foreign currency charge, applies its own rate and adds its own fee. Result: the customer saw 350 pesos and their statement says 362.

That is not the plugin's fault, and the maker says so plainly in its documentation: the conversion is display only. But it is worth knowing beforehand, because the complaint arrives anyway and it arrives at you.

What it does

• Automatic rates from three providers: ExchangeRate-API, Fixer.io and CurrencyFreaks, with scheduled updates hourly, twice daily, daily or weekly.
• Manual rate override for any currency, when you would rather not depend on the market.
• Charm pricing: ending in 99, in 95, in 9, or rounding to the unit, ten, hundred or thousand.
• Dual price, showing the converted and the original currency at the same time.
• Currency switchers in several formats so you can place them where they fit.
• Gateway and shipping filtering per currency, so only what you can actually charge or ship gets offered.
• Compatible with WPML and Polylang, which is the usual setup if your shop is already in two languages.

Rounding matters more than the exchange rate

An exact rate produces prices like 47.83, and that looks correct but reads as an automatic conversion. The buyer notices that this price was not meant for them, and in some markets that costs trust.

Which is why the options to end in 99 or 95 are not a cosmetic whim: they make the price look decided rather than calculated. They are worth five minutes for every currency you switch on.

The risk on the other side is rounding down with thin margins and discovering that in one currency you are selling below cost. If you work on tight margins, setting the rate manually is safer than automatically.

Gateway filtering avoids the expensive failure

Of all the features, this is the least advertised and the one that saves the most trouble. If one of your gateways does not take a currency, offering it leads to a payment that fails at the very end, with the customer already decided.

The same goes for shipping: showing a rate in a currency for a country you do not ship to is promising something you then have to undo by email.

The right way to set it up is the reverse of how it is usually done: first check which currencies your gateway really accepts, and switch on only those.

Requirements and what it does not do

It needs WooCommerce and works with high performance order storage. Automatic rates depend on WP-Cron working on your installation.

It does not settle in the customer's currency. It does not convert at the gateway and it does not remove the need to configure your gateway for several currencies if that is what you actually want.

And it is not a translation plugin. It changes prices, not text: languages remain the job of WPML, Polylang or whichever you use.

Alternatives in the catalogue

There is plenty to choose from in this category, and it is worth looking because whether a plugin settles or not varies: WooCommerce Multi Currency Store, Multi Currency Pro, the YITH switcher and YayCurrency.

If your specific problem is PayPal conversion, there is a dedicated tool for that: PayPal Currency Converter.

Frequently asked questions

Does the customer pay in the currency they see?
Not necessarily. The conversion is display only; settlement goes in your gateway's currency.

Where do the exchange rates come from?
From ExchangeRate-API, Fixer.io or CurrencyFreaks, and you can set them by hand if you prefer not to depend on the market.

How often are they updated?
Hourly, twice daily, daily or weekly, depending on your setting. It relies on WP-Cron.

Do orders and emails come out in the chosen currency?
They are displayed in that currency, yes, but it is presentation formatting.

Can I hide a gateway for a particular currency?
Yes, and you should for the ones your gateway does not accept, so you do not lose the payment at the end.

Does it translate the shop?
No. Prices and currency only; languages go through WPML or Polylang.