Getting paid in New Zealand dollars

The number on the page is not the number charged

Price something at US$49 and a New Zealand buyer pays whatever their card issuer decides, on the day, plus a foreign transaction fee most cards apply to overseas merchants. They see one figure at checkout and a different one on their statement.

That gap is small in dollars and large in trust. It is also the kind of thing people remember at renewal time, when they are deciding whether you are the sort of business that surprises them.

Three separate costs, often confused

People often assume the first is the whole story. In practice the third is the one quietly costing the merchant, because it applies on every sale and never appears as a line item.

What actually has to be true

Displaying “NZ$” next to a number converted from USD is not the same as pricing in NZD. For the buyer to be charged a New Zealand dollar amount, the product has to be denominated in NZD and the processor has to take the payment in NZD.

The GST connection

There is a second reason to denominate in NZD, which is that GST is a New Zealand dollar amount. A price that floats with the exchange rate produces a GST figure that floats with it too, and an invoice showing a tax amount that does not reconcile to a round local price is a small monthly irritation for whoever does your books.

Quoting NZ$99 including GST means the invoice reads NZ$86.09 plus NZ$12.91 every time, which is the sort of boring consistency that stops questions before they are asked.