I'm interested in putting pricing for our product in some different
currencies on our web site. With the weak dollar, it seems like I could
stimulate some international sales if I put the prices in local currency.

I could probably figure out how to write the conversion rate code if I
could find a source of exchange rates. Probably currencies I would be
looking for are:

Euros
GBP
Aus$
NZ $
Canadian Dollars

Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could
get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?

George Sexton <gsexton@mhsoftware.com> wrote:

> I'm interested in putting pricing for our product in some different
> currencies on our web site. With the weak dollar, it seems like I could
> stimulate some international sales if I put the prices in local
currency.
>
> I could probably figure out how to write the conversion rate code if I
> could find a source of exchange rates. Probably currencies I would be
> looking for are:
>
> Euros
> GBP
> Aus$
> NZ $
> Canadian Dollars
>
> Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could
> get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?

xe.com has exchange rates. No idea of the rates.

--
John Bokma http://johnbokma.com/

George Sexton wrote:
> I'm interested in putting pricing for our product in some different
> currencies on our web site.

>
> I could probably figure out how to write the conversion rate code if I
> could find a source of exchange rates.

>
> Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could
> get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?

See http://www.oanda.com/channels/busine...ess.shtml#data

I've had no experience as a business or automated user, nor do I know
what they charge or require (I'll let you research that yourself). I
just go to oanda when I want to find out e.g. how many dollars £37.40
would be, or how many Swiss francs I'd need to have to get 72 euros.


--
John
They never tell me *how* to get the money though...

John Bokma wrote:
> George Sexton <gsexton@mhsoftware.com> wrote:
>
>> Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could
>> get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?
>
> xe.com has exchange rates. No idea of the rates.
>

$540 US per year. Little on the high side. I'll have to think about it.

John Hosking wrote:

> George Sexton wrote:
> > I'm interested in putting pricing for our product in some different
> > currencies on our web site.
>
> >
> > I could probably figure out how to write the conversion rate code
> > if I could find a source of exchange rates.
>
> >
> > Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I
> > could get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?
>
> See http://www.oanda.com/channels/busine...ess.shtml#data
>
> I've had no experience as a business or automated user, nor do I know
> what they charge or require (I'll let you research that yourself). I
> just go to oanda when I want to find out e.g. how many dollars £37.40
> would be, or how many Swiss francs I'd need to have to get 72 euros.

Both OANDA.com's FXML and FXCSV services are a bit on the high-priced
end, though, at $200 per month.
http://www.oanda.com/channels/business/FXML.shtml
http://www.oanda.com/channels/business/FXCSV.shtml

Their FXP service is even more expensive, at $1000 per month.
http://www.oanda.com/channels/business/FXP.shtml

XE.com's Currency Data Feed Service, on the other hand, is "only" at
$540 per year.
http://www.xe.com/dfs/

--
Kim André Akerø
- kimandre@NOSPAMbetadome.com
(remove NOSPAM to contact me directly)

George Sexton <gsexton@mhsoftware.com> wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> George Sexton <gsexton@mhsoftware.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could
>>> get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?
>>
>> xe.com has exchange rates. No idea of the rates.
>>
>
> $540 US per year. Little on the high side. I'll have to think about it.

Pfft, that's quite steep.

Some time ago I wrote
http://johnbokma.com/perl/currencyconverter.html
for educational purposes.

Also, Google can do some conversions for you, not sure if
http://johnbokma.com/perl/google-calculator.html

still works (if not, let me know).

What I probably would do is run either program (a little extended) as a
cron job once a week, or twice a month, and use that data.

--
John Bokma http://johnbokma.com/

In article <D8Gdnd8bH57x4lHanZ2dnUVZ_ryqnZ2d@comcast.com>,
George Sexton <gsexton@mhsoftware.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could
> get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?

The IMF makes extensive exchange rate data available in tab-delimited
form:

http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm

I use it on my site to feed some JavaScript that changes amounts when a
user selects a (PayPal-supported) currency to pay with.

--
My personal UDP list: 127.0.0.1, 4ax.com, buzzardnews.com, googlegroups.com,
heapnode.com, localhost, ntli.net, teranews.com, vif.com, x-privat.org

"George Sexton" <gsexton@mhsoftware.com> wrote in message
news8Gdnd8bH57x4lHanZ2dnUVZ_ryqnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
> I'm interested in putting pricing for our product in some different
> currencies on our web site. With the weak dollar, it seems like I could
> stimulate some international sales if I put the prices in local currency.
>
> I could probably figure out how to write the conversion rate code if I
> could find a source of exchange rates. Probably currencies I would be
> looking for are:
>
> Euros
> GBP
> Aus$
> NZ $
> Canadian Dollars
>
> Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could get
> the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?


The Bank of Canada supplies this info (xml, csv, rss) for the Canadian
dollar ...
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/exchange-look.html

Try your national bank's site.

nutN2Lewz wrote:
> The Bank of Canada supplies this info (xml, csv, rss) for the Canadian
> dollar ...
> http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/rates/exchange-look.html
>
> Try your national bank's site.

The US Federal Reserve Bank of NY is going to cease publishing the data
at the end of this year. Evidently they feel there are enough
alternative sources (places where you can buy the data)...

George Sexton wrote:

> Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could
> get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?

The European Central Bank provides an XML feed to convert between the Euro
and other major currencies.

http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurof...xref-daily.xml

It's updated daily. Just grab the data, use it to convert a price in your
local currency into Euros, and from there into any of the other currencies
listed, including USD, GBP, JPY, CAD, etc.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 35 days, 16:04.]

Bottled Water
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/02/18/bottled-water/

On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:44:58 -0700, George Sexton wrote:

> I'm interested in putting pricing for our product in some different
> currencies on our web site. With the weak dollar, it seems like I could
> stimulate some international sales if I put the prices in local
> currency.
>
> I could probably figure out how to write the conversion rate code if I
> could find a source of exchange rates. Probably currencies I would be
> looking for are:
>
> Euros
> GBP
> Aus$
> NZ $
> Canadian Dollars
>
> Does anyone know of a free, or reasonably priced source where I could
> get the exchange rates automatically (say as an XML feed)?

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I ended up using the feed from
the European Central Bank.

I wrote a program that reads a configuration file of "accept-language"
and currency. It then reads a file like "priceconnect.html", does a regex
search for US currency values, and replaces the found value with the US
Currency formatted for the user's locale, and the amount in the target
currency. This means that if someone in Germany is looking at the US
pricing, he sees it as USD 99,00, rather than $99.00. So, I have pricing
for:

en_AU
en_CA
en_GB
en_IE
en_NZ
fr_FR
fr_CA
da
....
de_DE
de_AT
de_CH

along with the major European countries and their currency. 20 currency/
locale variants in all. I used the mod_negotiation module for Apache 2.0
to map the accept-language header into the correct file. I tried using
MultiViews but it didn't seem to handle the country variant in addition
to the language correctly.

If you want to see it in action, set your browser to something besides
en_US like en_GB, etc and go to:

http://www.mhsoftware.com/priceconnect.var

Anyhow it turned out to be a day long project. Now I need to go through
my Shopping cart and put it in as well...


--
George Sexton
MH Software, Inc. - Home of Connect Daily Web Calendar
http://www.mhsoftware.com/connectdaily.htm

George L. Sexton wrote:

> http://www.mhsoftware.com/priceconnect.var

So I see, say:

USD99.00
£49.22

(and I think there should be a space between "D" and "9"), but I wonder,
if I were to go ahead and buy the product, which would I be charged.
According to the ECB exchange rate, it doesn't matter, they're the same.
But the exchange rate my credit card company charges is likely to be
different. So which price will I really be charged? I'm guessing USD 99.
If so, then the other price is just an estimate, and should be clearly
shown as being an estimate. I'd change its colour to, say, #999 make it a
couple of point sizes smaller, and prefix it with "~" (the internationally
recognised symbol of unsureness).

> This means that if someone in Germany is looking at the US pricing, he
> sees it as USD 99,00, rather than $99.00.

Is the whole page translated? If not, the localised decimal separator may
look odd and out of place.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 42 days, 15:41.]

The Semantic Web
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/03/09/sw/

Toby A Inkster <usenet200803@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:

>George L. Sexton wrote:
>
>> http://www.mhsoftware.com/priceconnect.var
>
>So I see, say:
>
> USD99.00
> £49.22
>
>According to the ECB exchange rate, it doesn't matter, they're the same.
>But the exchange rate my credit card company charges is likely to be
>different. So which price will I really be charged? I'm guessing USD 99.
>If so, then the other price is just an estimate, and should be clearly
>shown as being an estimate.

An important point. As someone who deals a lot cross-currency, it is
irrelevant what the "exchange rate" is, if I buy a product in USD (or
whatever) then I am charged by the card issuing company at *their*
rate, and often with a foreign transaction fee added as well.

There is no point in a site conducting transactions in one currency,
and displaying the "current exchange rate" into my currency, that
information is worthless at best and misleading at worse.

Matt


--
The Probert Encyclopaedia
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

Toby A Inkster wrote:
> George L. Sexton wrote:
>
>> http://www.mhsoftware.com/priceconnect.var
>
> So I see, say:
>
> USD99.00
> £49.22
>
> (and I think there should be a space between "D" and "9"), but I wonder,
> if I were to go ahead and buy the product, which would I be charged.
> According to the ECB exchange rate, it doesn't matter, they're the same.
> But the exchange rate my credit card company charges is likely to be
> different. So which price will I really be charged? I'm guessing USD 99.
> If so, then the other price is just an estimate, and should be clearly
> shown as being an estimate. I'd change its colour to, say, #999 make it a
> couple of point sizes smaller, and prefix it with "~" (the internationally
> recognised symbol of unsureness).

There's a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that gives this pretty
clearly. Perhaps I need to include a reference to that somewhere higher
in the page.

>
>> This means that if someone in Germany is looking at the US pricing, he
>> sees it as USD 99,00, rather than $99.00.
>
> Is the whole page translated? If not, the localised decimal separator may
> look odd and out of place.
>

So, I do the best I can. I can't afford to localize the whole page but I
can reformat the currency. I think it would look stranger to use . as a
decimal separator for US currency, and "," for Euros. That would, I
think, really confuse people. Not using the localized decimal separator
for German would be strange, because Germany for example, uses the "."
as the thousands separator.

Matt Probert wrote:
>
> There is no point in a site conducting transactions in one currency,
> and displaying the "current exchange rate" into my currency, that
> information is worthless at best and misleading at worse.
>

Perhaps for you it's not worth while. Let's face it, the rate your card
issuer charges isn't going to vary by say more than 2% from the
published rate. All sorts of consumer and government agencies would be
ALL over them if they did. As for international transaction charges, if
your issuer does it, and you put up with it then that's your issue. I
certainly wouldn't stand for it, particularly for a business.

A lot of our customers in the UK, are small churches and schools. I
doubt seriously that most church/school secretaries in the UK are
intimately familiar with current exchange rates. Giving them a price in
local currency can them know what the approximate cost is. There is
a disclaimer at the bottom indicating that charges are billed in US$,
and the amount shown on their statement will be based on the exchange
rate set by the card issuer.

George Sexton wrote:

> A lot of our customers in the UK, are small churches and schools. I
> doubt seriously that most church/school secretaries in the UK are
> intimately familiar with current exchange rates.

I imagine that most know that it's about $1=£0.50.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 42 days, 22:24.]
[Now Playing: apollo_four_forty_-_aint_talkin_bout_dub.ogg]

The Semantic Web
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/03/09/sw/

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

> Using a decimal for Euros looks just as strange as using a comma for USD.

Try telling that to the Irish!

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 42 days, 23:32.]
[Now Playing: Dave Matthews Band - The Space between]

The Semantic Web
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/03/09/sw/

George Sexton <gsexton@mhsoftware.com> wrote:

>Matt Probert wrote:
>>
>> There is no point in a site conducting transactions in one currency,
>> and displaying the "current exchange rate" into my currency, that
>> information is worthless at best and misleading at worse.
>>
>
>Perhaps for you it's not worth while.

Indeed. But remember, I was brought up with international exchange, I
buy and sell internationally, and I have travelled widely abroad. Eg,
I know a lot about exchange rates from a UK perspective.

When a person in the UK makes a purchase, using a credit or debit
card, in a foreign currency, the exchange rate chared is the rate
prevailing at the time of the transaction being processed by the card
issuer. To guess, and that is all it is, what that rate shall be is
misleading.

Sure, a tourist wanting to travel to the USA from the UK may like to
know that the approximate exchange rate is currently about $2 for £1,
but that's a different scenario.

The exchange rate quoted on the news etc, in the UK is NEVER given to
UK consumers.

Matt


--
The Probert Encyclopaedia
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

George Sexton wrote:
> Matt Probert wrote:
>>
>> There is no point in a site conducting transactions in one currency,
>> and displaying the "current exchange rate" into my currency, that
>> information is worthless at best and misleading at worse.
>>
>
> Perhaps for you it's not worth while. Let's face it, the rate your card
> issuer charges isn't going to vary by say more than 2% from the
> published rate. All sorts of consumer and government agencies would be
> ALL over them if they did. As for international transaction charges, if
> your issuer does it, and you put up with it then that's your issue. I
> certainly wouldn't stand for it, particularly for a business.
>

But the exchange rate for exchanging dollars for pounds is different in
the U.S. than it is in the U.K. Here, it's cheaper to buy dollars, but
more expensive to buy pounds than it is in the U.K. And if the customer
is in the U.K, the credit card company is going to go by the U.K. rate.

> A lot of our customers in the UK, are small churches and schools. I
> doubt seriously that most church/school secretaries in the UK are
> intimately familiar with current exchange rates. Giving them a price in
> local currency can them know what the approximate cost is. There is
> a disclaimer at the bottom indicating that charges are billed in US$,
> and the amount shown on their statement will be based on the exchange
> rate set by the card issuer.
>

IHMO a disclaimer at the bottom isn't very good. How often do you read
such disclaimers? Sure, it may be *legally* sound - but it's not
necessarily *customer friendly*. Rather, you should indicate where you
display the price that it is an estimate.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

George Sexton wrote:
> Toby A Inkster wrote:
>> George L. Sexton wrote:
>>
>>> http://www.mhsoftware.com/priceconnect.var
>>
>> So I see, say:
>>
>> USD99.00
>> £49.22
>>
>> (and I think there should be a space between "D" and "9"), but I
>> wonder, if I were to go ahead and buy the product, which would I be
>> charged. According to the ECB exchange rate, it doesn't matter,
>> they're the same. But the exchange rate my credit card company charges
>> is likely to be different. So which price will I really be charged?
>> I'm guessing USD 99. If so, then the other price is just an estimate,
>> and should be clearly shown as being an estimate. I'd change its
>> colour to, say, #999 make it a couple of point sizes smaller, and
>> prefix it with "~" (the internationally recognised symbol of unsureness).
>
> There's a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that gives this pretty
> clearly. Perhaps I need to include a reference to that somewhere higher
> in the page.
>
>>
>>> This means that if someone in Germany is looking at the US pricing, he
>>> sees it as USD 99,00, rather than $99.00.
>>
>> Is the whole page translated? If not, the localised decimal separator
>> may look odd and out of place.
>>
>
> So, I do the best I can. I can't afford to localize the whole page but I
> can reformat the currency. I think it would look stranger to use . as a
> decimal separator for US currency, and "," for Euros. That would, I
> think, really confuse people. Not using the localized decimal separator
> for German would be strange, because Germany for example, uses the "."
> as the thousands separator.
>

No, it's all what they're used to. Using a decimal for Euros looks just
as strange as using a comma for USD. If you're going to display their
currency, you need to display it in their locale.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================