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How do I handle multi-currency in Zuora?

Zuora

How do I handle multi-currency in Zuora?

When expanding globally, the ability to bill your customers in local currencies and process online payments for an international customer base is critical for bringing your products and services to the world market. Zuora makes this possible, allowing you to define your pricing and packaging for global customers and to manage all aspects of billing and payment processing. Zuora's multi-currency feature enables your business to easily and effectively customize your offerings and attract new international customers.

Also see How do I plan for internationalization in Zuora if my business wants to expand globally?

Solution

To support multiple currencies in Zuora, complete the following steps:

  1. Modify your Z-Billing settings to enable the currencies you want to support.
  2. Configure your product catalog for multi-currency so that you can customize your price by currency type.
  3. Create customer accounts with the desired currency. This allows your customers to be invoiced in the desired currency, and allows you to add products to the subscription for the currency selected.
  4. Create a bill run to invoice the customer with the correct currency displayed.
  5. Select a payment gateway which can process and settle in the currencies you need.

Enable the currencies you want to support

To invoice your customers in different currencies, start by enabling the currencies you would like to support. Zuora defaults to the following currencies:

  • US Dollar
  • Euro
  • Pound Sterling
  • Yen
  • Canadian Dollar

Configure Product Catalog for multi-currency

Next, ensure that your product catalog rate plans are set up for multi-currency.

  1. Navigate to Products > Product Catalog and find the target product. 
  2. On the product detail page, click Edit price in multi-currency
  3. In the pop-up window, activate a different currency and edit the price of the rate plan in the new currency:
    • Click Activate to activate the currencies.
    • Click the price fields to edit the rate plan prices. 
    • Click Save when you are done.

In the following scenario when both conditions are true, you can edit only two currencies at a time. If you need to edit more than two currencies, edit two currencies, save them, and edit the next two:

  • If there are more than two currencies activated in your tenant.
  • If the product includes more than 2000 prices.

At this point, you have completed the setup to support multi-currency in Zuora Billing. It is important to note that this feature does not cover exchange rate fluctuation and Zuora does not manage conversions. You must update the pricing to reflect the rate you want to use and if you need to update the prices again, repeat the above steps and modify the price fields.

Create customer accounts with the desired currency

When creating an account, there is a Billing and Payment Information section on the account which contains a Currency field. On this field, there is a drop-down list that you can choose and the list of currencies will depend on the active currencies defined under your Billing settings (Customize Currencies). You can select one currency per customer account and once it is set, this field cannot be edited.

When creating a subscription, if you notice that the product rate plan is not showing on the drop-down list, check the customer account's currency.  The subscription will display the list of product rate plans which match the current set on the customer account. Additionally, if the product rate plan is not showing up, check to make sure the desired currency has been activated in product catalog.

Invoice the customer with the correct currency displayed

Generating an invoice for a foreign currency account is no different than invoicing in a domestic currency. The currency symbol on the invoice is hard-coded in Zuora and matches the currency selected on the customer account. The following is a sample invoice PDF where € is properly positioned to the amounts.

Sample Invoice PDF _ EUR.png

Check gateway/processor for sufficient multi-currency support

If you process a payment for a foreign currency account and encounter an error or find that the payment transaction is processed in the wrong currency by your payment processor, your gateway and/or processor (payments provider) might not support the currency type you want to use. Please contact your payments provider for more information on multi-currency processing and settlement.

All of our pre-integrated payment gateways support multiple currencies, but some payments providers support more currencies than others. Additionally, some providers issue separate merchant IDs for processing payments in a specific currency, and others use one merchant ID for all transactions. (In the latter case, the provider handles the foreign-currency processing at the back end.)

Separate Merchant IDs for Each Currency Type

An example of a payments provider that supports two currencies is Moneris eSelectPLUS (Canada); they can process payments USD and CAD. Moneris merchants who sign up for both CAD and USD payment processing will be issued two separate merchant IDs (store IDs) to use. You (the merchant) will then ensure all payment transactions for customers they want to process in USD are directed to Moneris using the store ID for USD. Likewise, you will send all payment transactions which should be processed in CAD to the Moneris using the store ID associated with CAD. Each store ID is configured in Zuora as a separate payment gateway profile, and the gateway type is indicated on the Zuora customer account (as seen in the image below).

Moneris_Billing and Payments.jpg

When Zuora submits transactions to Moneris, we do not submit a currency type with the transaction (as it is not required in the Moneris API request string). Moneris receives the payment amount in the request and will process the transaction in the currency mapped to the store ID.

For example, if you are using Moneris and want to sell products in EUR, you can do so with the understanding that all transactions will still be processed in either USD or CAD. You must set up your Zuora product catalog rate plan charge to reflect a price in EUR that accounts for the foreign currency exchange difference between USD and EUR, such that when the payment is processed through Moneris in USD or CAD, it is the equivalent of that cost in EUR. 

One merchant ID for multi-currency payment processing

Alternatively, some gateways and processors will issue only one merchant ID and that merchant ID accept payments of any currency. The gateway/processor handles the multi-currency processing on the back-end based on how your merchant account is configured.  

Multiple payment gateways for multi-currency payment processing

Zuora's multiple payment gateway functionality allows you to work with multiple payments providers, giving you the flexibility to sign up with different providers for different features, functionality, and pricing. In the example above, where the merchant is using Moneris eSelectPLUS (Canada) for CAD and USD payment processing, but requires payments to also be processed in EUR. If the merchant must have their EUR payments processed in EUR currency, then the merchant can work with an additional payments provider to process all their non-USD and non-CAD transactions. See how to choose a payment gateway for more information.

Generate reports that group by currency

Zuora Reporting provides predesigned reports for you to generate or create custom reports. For any predefined reports that contain a grouping, Zuora will first group the data by currency and then totals within that currency. Zuora does not convert the returned values to a single currency.