Forex support

[taylorbrooks]

Currently, as a seller on a Balanced-powered marketplace, all of my prices are set in USD. If someone from Europe with an account denominated in EUR purchases something from me, their bank will charge them a foreign exchange fee.

Forex support in Balanced will allow sellers to sell things in other currencies, such as EUR. This way, the buyer will not pay their bank the exchange fee, and will see the full, round number on their account statement.

Even though the seller charges in EUR, it will hit their account in USD. Everything else stays the same. Eventually, we hope to offer 'multicurrency' support, which would allow sellers to have different escrow accounts in different currencies. Because we can not yet pay out sellers outside the US, this feature is not yet necessary.

Balanced will (tentatively) charge a 2% fee for providing this service. This is consistent with Stripe.

If a charge that was initiated in EUR gets refunded, the buyer will be refunded in EUR, at the same amount. The seller may end up taking a small hit if the exchange rate has changed in the period between the charge and the refund. This is consistent with Stripe.

We are not sure yet how many currencies will be available at launch, but the infrastructure doesn't care. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_one_infinity_rule

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Original issue contents below. Title: "Add ability to charge cards in non-USD currencies"

Are there plans to add CAD as a currency option for Balanced?

I'm migrating from Stripe to Balanced. I asked them about taking CAD and it would require me to create a brand new Stripe account -- which is a deal breaker.

[matin]

@taylorbrooks what would you like to do in CAD?

1. charge card in CAD
2. hold funds in CAD
3. pay people in CAD
4. All of the above

[taylorbrooks]

Just charge the card.

[Asparagirl]

Option number 4, please, but of course we'll take what we can get...

[matin]

Option 1 is the easiest. We have the ability to perform this now from a banking standpoint. Same goes with EUR and GBP.

The card will be charged in CAD, EUR, or GBP, which means the card holder doesn't have to worry about seeing a USD charge a possible fee from their bank. However, it doesn't cover option 2, which means the funds will show up for you as USD.

This is an approved change, but it still needs to be spec'ed out. I've thought about this before, and I'm not sure what the best way is to represent USD and the local currency in the Debit. I'm open to pull requests.

[matin]

Updated issue title to reflect charging cards in CAD.

[matin]

+1 for YEN and WON

[mahmoudimus]

Charging in GBP

[iffy]

We want to charge in USD, CAD and GBP. Meaning, we want to list the price as CAD 10.00 and receive whatever the USD's equivalent is when the transaction happened.

[jrus]

One question: given the current way that balanced functions (i.e. before any API changes related to this topic), is a marketplace allowed to charge in USD through the balanced API, but show amounts in some other currency to their customers? Or are there legal/contractual barriers to that?

[dortort]

+1 for EUR

[todgru]

+1

[eroh92]

+1

[mdavis1982]

:+1: for GBP

[garrettlangley]

+1

[arush]

+1 from @brandid for GBP and EUR i dont care how it shows up in the dashboard for now... just need to avoid those bank charges, ouch.

[jkwade]

For context re: @arush's charges, some of their customers are currently getting a £25 forex charge.

[sagivo]

+1 for Brazilian real and Israeli new shekel

[muyiwaoyeniyi]

+1 payout in foreign currency...CAD, GBP

[steveklabnik]

As I mentioned in http://blog.balancedpayments.com/more-details-about-bitcoin/ , the work with coinbase paves the way towards accepting non-USD currencies.

[steveklabnik]

I have created a milestone to track progress towards completing this issue: https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues?milestone=9&state=open

Since you all care about it, I invite you to check it out and give some feedback, especially around documentation and the forex service itself.

[steveklabnik]

I've both updated the OP's post, as well as filled out some detail in the milestone issues.

[steveklabnik]

I've started work on the API specification for this: https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/pull/564

[chadwhitacre]

+1 from @gittip. :-)

[alexmic]

@steveklabnik Given that balanced works with amounts in cents right now, how will that change when new currencies are introduced, for example JPY (which is a zero-decimal currency)?

[steveklabnik]

@alexmic you can see the spec here: https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/pull/564

That said, there will be a list of zero-decimal currencies, and you'll just pass them in whole. Balanced will keep track of which ones are zero-decimal and which ones aren't.

[garfieldmypet]

Hi, balanced team,

Any update on this feature, and the progress of supporting non US marketplace?

[hackajesse]

+4 (my team) for paying people in their local currency - priorities GBP, EUR, NIS. Theoretically this helps people being paid out since they won't receive a local bank charge - accurate to the best of your knowledge?

[jayarajporoor]

I'm leading and India-based SaaS startup, targeting globally. Very interested to see Balanced support payouts to non-US (India, in my case) company bank accounts.

[cerlpbr]

When are you guys going to implement payouts to non US bank account? We have customers in NL & UK that need API to transfer from their bank account to other bank accounts using SEPA. We are a marketplace platform. http://structureddomains.com and we are seeing a lot of demand. we received requests to build 85 different marketplaces that would need to payout to non us bank accounts. ETA?

[JoeConyers]

Would love an update on ex-us support. We are looking to launch ex-us more broadly and need a solution. (otherwise we will have to implement a payoneer or something.) Any chance this will be out by June?

[Robboat]

Is there any information regarding which non-US countries will likely be set up first? We are setting up a marketplace in Canada and working on selecting the best payment platform right now and this one looks ideal. I will probably just have to switch when this comes to Canada, but at least if I know the approximate spot in the que that will help our planning. Thanks,