A currency selector for non US smugmugers please?

DKS photography

I have posted this in another post, but it is way down the list, so here we go to see if there are others who feel that their Smugmug experience would be improved by these 2 suggestions.
I am in Australia and my clients panic when they see Uncle Sam currency being forced on them. So how about it you guys, a currency selector for non US smugmugers?
Whilst on the subject, I have a pro account and when smugmug feels it's time to send me some money from sales, I have to wait 20 working days (nearly 1 month) on Australian banks for American cheques to be cleared in Australia and I get charged a good fee for the privilege as well.:huh
Can't you direct deposit to my Paypal account automatically? This would save you the process of cheque writing and me the 1 month wait for my money. A win-win situation.
Let's hear what smugmug and non US residents think.

iamback

DKS photography wrote:

I am in Australia and my clients panic when they see Uncle Sam currency being forced on them. So how about it you guys, a currency selector for non US smugmugers?

when you pay with a credit card, you're always charged in your local currency (at whatever the exchange rate for the day is). With a "currency selector" do you mean they would be charged directly in local currency? That would be a huge undertaking on the part of SmugMug as far as I can tell. But there are online currency converters, some free to use even, that you can link to from your site, so people could at least get an idea what they'd actually be paying in their own currency. Of course only the actual rate on the date the card is charged by their credit card company will be final.

DKS photography wrote:

Whilst on the subject, I have a pro account and when smugmug feels it's time to send me some money from sales, I have to wait 20 working days (nearly 1 month) on Australian banks for American cheques to be cleared in Australia and I get charged a good fee for the privilege as well.
Can't you direct deposit to my Paypal account automatically? This would save you the process of cheque writing and me the 1 month wait for my money. A win-win situation.

I'm still in my trial period, but I'm not jumping yet because I have a number of issues - the lack of an option for payment via Paypal or direct electronic transfer being one, would will cause me at least to hold back on a pro account even if I do decide to take an account.

It's exactly the same here in the Netherlands: cashing checks takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money: The whole banking system is totally automated and almost totally electronic - there are hardly any pieces of paper going through the system any more (and what pieces of paper there are going into the system are standardized and and OCR'd: no human doing anything with those). If you come to the bank with a check the person at the teller will often say huh? and need to fetch a superior - and that's just for starters. There is no way to automatically process a check (they're all different - no way to OCR that either) so it's all manual work, with forms to fill, and signatures and counter signatures. All this extra manual and unusual work costs (apart from taking time), and the customer is charged for it with a heavy fee. Amazon sent checks, and I've stopped maintaining my books pages, it just wasn't worth it. Google Adsense also started out that way, but now has an option to pay out via direct electronic transfer, which works quite well. (Not that I'm getting rich on that - but at least I get the whole amount instead of 85% or so.)

So as I see it, Paypal would be a good option because from your Paypal account you can transfer to your own bank account (in most countries at least). Direct electronic transfer would also be a good option - the best, in fact. Having checks sent is unattractive since it's both a lot of extra work for me, and for the bank who then charges me for that: for a $100 check I'd pay more than 10 Euros only a small part of which is currency exchange commission.

If Google can do it, why not SmugMug?

DKS photography

iamback wrote:

when you pay with a credit card, you're always charged in your local currency (at whatever the exchange rate for the day is). With a "currency selector" do you mean they would be charged directly in local currency? That would be a huge undertaking on the part of SmugMug as far as I can tell. But there are online currency converters, some free to use even, that you can link to from your site, so people could at least get an idea what they'd actually be paying in their own currency. Of course only the actual rate on the date the card is charged by their credit card company will be final.

You are missing the point. I have had many clients ask why I am selling my photos of their event in America when my clients event was in Australia. People are embrassing the internet, yes. But when it comes to giving their credit card details out to another country, they freeze up. If the whole experience appeared to be happening in their own backyard, their own currency etc. etc. my sales would increase dramatically. This of course would flow on to smugmugs percentages increasing in volume. There are many sites on the internet that you can choose what currency you want the shopping cart to work in. Why would it be such a huge job for smugmug to do this? It will only result in more money for them. As I said, a win-win situation.
I am asking this to move forward and progress, not as some pain the @rse, but because of the multitude of clients that I have putting the brakes on when they see US dollars. Why don't I use a similar site in Australia.....well, because I don't know of any. Tell me where they are and I will start using them.

Luc De Jaeger

Electronic transfer
I'd prefer Eletronic Transfer, "the Google way":D PayPal is a good second choice too, but not every pro will have a PayPal account and it's far more convenient to have an electronic money transfer.

I agree with what Marjolein has written in her answer. The checks I get from the USA from other sites I run are a burden: too much hassle in the bank, the bank fees are too high (I often lost 1/3rd of the amount to the bank:cry etc.).

It would be a good thing if SmugMug could try to make an option between USD or Euros for customers to order photos or other goodies on our smugmug site.

Luc

Andy

We'd love to offer both of these options, local currency and pro payment by electronic means. We're just not there yet. Both are things that we discuss internally but we've not been able to get them done yet, for many reasons. We will continue to explore this and hopefully at some point we'll have these options.

Sorry I don't have a better answer for all of you!

iamback

DKS photography wrote:

You are missing the point. (...) But when it comes to giving their credit card details out to another country, they freeze up.

Well, you only mentioned currency, so obviously I missed that part of your point.

DKS photography wrote:

If the whole experience appeared to be happening in their own backyard, their own currency etc. etc. my sales would increase dramatically. This of course would flow on to smugmugs percentages increasing in volume. There are many sites on the internet that you can choose what currency you want the shopping cart to work in. Why would it be such a huge job for smugmug to do this?

Mainly (but I'm only gussing, I don't work for SM) because they already have a shopping card, and it doesn't support these things. Shopping carts tend to be pretty complicated pieces of software, even if they deal in only one currency and only credit card payments. Most companies setting up a shopping card therefore don't build their own, but license software for this. My guess is SM did not build their own shopping card software since they're not in the business of building shopping cart software (or forum software, or blogging software, or wiki software ). But even if they did, the crucial question is - how easily customizable is it? Is it already built to be able to handle multiple currencies?

Dealing in other currencies is not just a matter of doing a conversion calculation and quote that amount. One may need to deal with different back-end providers to handle different currencies. And don't forget taxes: once you start charging Euros, it's likely you have to deal with VAT as well. And so on... I don't develop shopping cart software myself (I'm not in that business either) but I hope that gives you some idea that it's not something you just implement - it might even involve converting to totally different shopping cart software.

It will only result in more money for them. As I said, a win-win situation.

I would agree with that. All I'm saying is that it wouldn't be simple.

Andy

iamback wrote:

My guess is SM did not build their own shopping card software since they're not in the business of building shopping cart software

Indeed we did build it.

iamback

Andy wrote:

Indeed we did build it.

Oops ... guessed wrong then. :uhoh