Shift4 Partners with Planet Payment to Offer Dynamic Currency Conversion

What does Dynamic Currency Conversion do? Every time a customer with a Visa or MasterCard issued by a foreign bank makes a transaction at a merchant, a fee of approximately 3% is charged to the customer to handle currency exchange and foreign processing. Currently, that fee gets split among the card associations (Visa/MasterCard) and the cardholders issuing bank. $$$ ON THE NET with DCC, however, spins off all foreign transactions to Planet Payment, a transaction processor that specializes in foreign currency conversions and maintains an inventory of foreign currency. Planet Payment authorizes these foreign cardholder transactions and locks in the current exchange rate. It then returns the authorization to the merchant listing both the dollar amount in the merchant’s currency and in the cardholder’s currency. The entire authorization process takes under three seconds. For merchants, $$$ ON THE NET with DCC enables them to know exactly what funds they will receive and often enables them to receive these fund significantly faster. Merchants are able to offer their foreign customers a valuable additional service, by showing them exactly how much they will be charged in their own currency - no more statement surprises. Plus, $$$ ON THE NET with DCC offers revenue sharing capabilities wherein the merchant can receive a portion of the fee charged to the customer. While several organizations today say they support Dynamic Currency Conversion, Shift4 is the first company to partner with Planet Payment to make this capability readily available to merchants at the point-of-sale. Merchants simply swipe or key in the card utilizing their standard methods. $$$ ON THE NET uses a numerical recognition program to identify foreign cards and seamlessly sends these transactions over a high speed leased line directly to Planet Payment. The authorization is returned as normal and the total in both currencies is printed right on the receipt. The reason this capability was not previously available at the point-of-sale is the extensive programming required between the POS or PMS system and Planet Payment. With the interface Shift4 created to Planet Payment, however, POS vendors can offer this capability with minimal development time and resources required. In addition, the $$$ ON THE NET interface offers a consistent, standardized solution that is compliant with all current and potential upcoming card association regulations, including any required disclaimers and complete opt-in/opt-out capabilities.