Many brands that have already been successful in their home market are planning to expand into foreign markets. In an effort to offer their customers the best possible shopping experience, companies often choose to make payment options available in the currency used in that region. Below, we will tell you how to add multiple currency in Shopify.
Single Shopify store and currency conversion
The solution that is relatively easiest to implement is currency conversion within a single store. In practice, this is done using applications such as Best Currency Converter or MLV Auto Currency Switcher. The applications install the currency converter on the site. In the application settings, we choose the currencies we want to display and the currency conversion rate (automatic, based on the data provided by the application or set manually).
An important disadvantage of this solution is the fact that the converted currencies are shown in the store at each stage of the customer’s purchase path, except for the checkout. For example, if we select PLN as the main currency of our store during the initial Shopify setup, and a user from Germany changes the currency to EUR, all the prices will be displayed in the selected currency, but after moving from cart to checkout, they will be seen in PLN again. The above-mentioned plugins inform the user about this change, but as our experience shows very often this “surprise” leads to cart abandonment and a lower conversion rate.
Shopify Markets and Shopify Payments
Traders who can use Shopify Payments are in a much simpler situation.
Shopify Payments is a payment gateway from Shopify – so far it is only available in selected countries. One of the benefits that using Shopify Payments offers is the ability to take full advantage of the new Shopify Markets functionality.
Shopify Markets is a Shopify feature that hit all audiences in late 2021. It allows you to easily run sales in multiple currencies from a single store. When a user changes currency we can move them to another domain, subdomain, or subdirectory. Moreover, depending on the market, we can set different prices, different taxes, or payment methods.
In the future, Shopify Markets will also allow the site to display different content based on region, provide a different product catalog, and preferred shipping centers.
The undeniable disadvantage of the Shopify Payments solution is the relatively high transaction fee (2.4%+0.3USD to 2.9%+0.3USD). For some of our customers, such a commission would already be significantly higher than the current fees (Shopify commission + payment gateway provider commission).
Some companies when deciding to enter a new market launch a company in that country, so it is possible to launch a Shopify store on that newly formed company. For many companies, however, such a move is not an option at the stage of exploring overseas expansion potential. So what if Shopify Payments isn’t a sensible option for us at the moment?
Separate Shopify store for each currency
The solution we recommend to our clients is to launch sales in a new marketplace on a new Shopify store instance. This solution has benefits that far outweigh the downsides. Let’s start with the latter.
Maintaining a separate store comes with double the fees – Shopify plan, commissions, and app fees. For merchants planning to sell in several markets, the remedy to some of the costs may be to choose the Shopify Plus plan.
The problem that emerges in this configuration is the synchronization of inventory – really helpful here are applications that allow you to maintain up-to-date inventory in all stores. Synchronization can also apply to other elements such as images and descriptions of products or collections. For more stores, a product information management (PIM) or ERP system will obviously be a better solution.
Let’s go over the advantages of this solution. The biggest benefit is the ability to offer our customers their favorite delivery and payment methods. Another important aspect is conducting separate marketing activities in each market, promoting or even selling different products, a dedicated support department, etc.
For large organizations that operate globally, increasing flexibility in the operations of individual markets is an important consideration. The enterprise-class clients that WeCanFly serves have extensive content, marketing, and e-commerce departments in each market. It would be virtually impossible to manage the entire environment from one location.
Our recommendation
If we were to recommend one of the above solutions, for now, it’s undoubtedly the best (in terms of conversion, user experience, convenience of management) solution to launch a dedicated store for a specific currency. The important thing to note here is that this is a store for the currency, not the market. On the store for the EUR currency, we can easily run additional language versions for e.g. Germany, Spain, France, etc.
Thinking about expanding your sales to foreign markets?
With the payment solutions available on the Shopify platform, you can effectively grow your business by operating in multiple markets. If you’re wondering which option will work best for your store or need help with implementing the selected functionality – contact us through the form below or get back to us on Facebook or Instagram.
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