Your guide to using WooCommerce multi-currency payments in Canada

WooCommerce is the ultimate WordPress-based ecommerce platform for merchants who want to sell successfully online. With hundreds of extensions and themes, the platform offers extensive customization and flexibility. Among the many native tools is WooPayments’ WooCommerce currency switcher, which lets customers pay in the currency of their choice. We’ll be taking a closer look at how to activate it, its key features, as well as how you can use a Wise Business account to maximize your cash flow with low fees and the mid-market exchange rate.

Key aspects of the WooCommerce multi-currency switcher

The premise of the Woocommerce multi-currency feature is for customers to be able to view your product prices in their native currency. After all, if you’ve got international customers from Australia or Japan, they’ll want to know exactly what things cost without having to bring up a conversion tool. If they see something they like, they can then buy from your store in that currency too, all while you receive earnings in CAD.

Some other features include:

• Fallback currency – If a customer’s home currency isn’t enabled on your website, the fallback currency will automatically be selected. For example, if you don't offer Polish złoty, the fallback currency is Euro.
• WooCommerce currency switcher widget – Placed in the footer, header, or a sidebar, this widget lets customers manually change currencies.
• Rounding capability – Currency conversions can make prices in other currencies look messy. Maybe you’ve priced a product at $10.5 CAD, which is then converted to £5.87. You can set your store to round prices to whole dollars or other values, so £5.87 can become £5.90 or even £6.

All these features serve to improve the cross-border customer experience, and in turn, bolster your business. With so many accommodations for international consumers, you can expand your reach, and they’ll view your business as one that’s accessible and aware of their needs.

How to activate multi-currency support on WooCommerce

If you’re looking to activate multi-currency support on your WooCommerce store, here’s how:

1. From your WooCommerce dashboard, download the extension.
2. Once downloaded, go to Plugins > Add New > Upload and select the ZIP file.
3. Click Install Now
4. Click Activate

After you’ve installed and activated the extension, you’ll have the ‘Multi-currency’ tab available in your WooCommerce settings. Whenever you need to configure your settings, you can go to the Multi-currency tab to see all the settings. Here, you’ll need to do the following:

• Set up your exchange rates service provider. It’s recommended that you subscribe to at least two or more for reliability reasons.
• Enable the currencies you want available on your site. You must also make sure the payment gateway you’re using can accept payments in all those selected currencies as well.
• Add a currency switcher by going to Admin > Widgets (under Appearance).
• Make sure the Default Customer Location is set to geolocate so your site can detect the visitor’s currency.

Make the most of your international transactions with a Wise Business account

If you’re looking to optimize your international dealings as an ecommerce seller in Canada, check out Wise. A Wise Business account offers multi-currency capabilities, where you can

• send money to over 160 countries,
• get local account details in over 10 currencies, and
• receive and hold money in over 20 currencies.

You also get the mid-market exchange rate for every transaction. That means you keep more of your hard-earned money, rather than losing it to conversion costs and markups. When you have to make a transfer or convert money, you’ll pay minimal fees starting at just 0.33%^*.

Beyond the transfers, Wise Business offers a range of business-specific tools like built-in international invoicing, Wise API to automate payroll and payment and reduce administrative effort, as well as countless integrations with popular software like Xero, Oracle NetSuite, and more.

Do you have employees and need to manage company spend? You can get aWise card for yourself and your employees so you can view team expenses transparently and in real time.

All of this, for a one-time payment of 42 CAD!

Final thoughts on the WooCommerce multi-currency feature

The more international capabilities you have on your ecommerce store—the more appealing it’ll be to a global audience. When customers can shop comfortably in a familiar currency, it provides a much more personalized experience that does wonders for customer satisfaction. Pairing WooCommerce’s multi-currency feature with an external tool such as Wise can give you even more control over cross-border transactions, helping your business thrive, but also cut down on unnecessary costs.

About the author:
	Piyush is an expert in finance topics for the Canadian market, covering everything you need to live without borders. He creates high quality content to help you make the best cross-border decisions. You can read more useful articles on his author profile.