When You Need Settlement in More Than One Currency

• Presentment: which currency the customer sees and is charged in.
• Settlement: which currency your provider pays out in.
• Banking: which currencies your account can actually receive.

Settlement currency support depends on the acquiring route and the accounts behind it, so it is configured per provider rather than assumed. That is why we treat supported settlement currencies as a comparison attribute between routes instead of a box every route ticks.

Where a route settles in a currency you do not hold, the conversion happens somewhere, and where it happens affects what you receive. Confirm which party converts before comparing headline rates.

• The exact settlement currencies the route supports for your entity.
• Whether each currency needs its own receiving account, and in which name.
• How refunds in a non-settlement currency are handled.
• How the settlement cycle is described for each currency.

Multi-currency setups rarely fail on the headline percentage; they fail on the parts of the processing cost that are quoted separately or not at all. Add them up on your own numbers before comparing two routes, because a route with a lower discount rate and a wider conversion margin is frequently the more expensive one.

• The percentage fee and the fixed per-transaction fee, per currency, since both can differ by route.
• The conversion margin applied when presentment and settlement currencies differ, and whose rate is used.
• Whether a refund is converted twice, so a returned order costs more than the original conversion.
• Cross-border and currency interchange elements, which are separate from the route's own margin.
• Any per-payout or per-account fee where each currency settles separately.
• Compare routes on effective cost per payment in each currency, not on the percentage alone.

Every settlement currency behaves like its own payout stream, which changes the cash-flow picture even when the total volume is unchanged. Each stream has its own cycle, and where the route applies a rolling reserve, the percentage is held out of each currency's settlement for the hold period before it is released, so the amount tied up is roughly that percentage of the volume processed during the hold period, currency by currency. A small currency can therefore hold back an awkward balance you cannot use elsewhere without converting it.

• Work out the held amount per currency on your real volume, not on the total.
• Check whether a reserve is held in the settlement currency or converted first.
• Confirm the minimum payout threshold per currency, which can delay small streams.

The lasting cost of multi-currency settlement is bookkeeping rather than fees. A single order can involve one presentment amount, a different settled amount, a conversion at an unstated rate and a fee deducted in a third currency, and if the reporting does not carry all of those, your finance team reconstructs them by hand every month.

• Ask whether reports give presentment amount, settled amount and the rate used on the same row.
• Confirm fees are itemised per transaction rather than netted into one lump per payout.
• Check that each payout can be traced to the transactions it contains, per currency.
• Agree how FX differences are booked before go-live, not at the first month end.

Supported settlement currencies and settlement descriptions are shown per route exactly as the provider stated them. We do not convert those statements into settlement days or rates that were never quoted.