How to set up currency in FTW

1. Change the currency

At the moment FTW uses Stripe as the only payment provider so before changing the currency, make sure it's supported in Stripe. See the Stripe documentation for supported currencies.

Environment variable REACT_APP_SHARETRIBE_MARKETPLACE_CURRENCY is used for the currency. For local development you can add the variable in the Gitignored .env file in the project root:

REACT_APP_SHARETRIBE_MARKETPLACE_CURRENCY=your-currency

You can also change the configuration with the command line tool by running

yarn run config

Remember to restart the application after editing the environment variable!

Note: If you already created listings before changing the currency, listings using old currency will not show the price when a new currency is in use. Currently, FTW doesn't support changing the currency of the listing so the price cannot be edited after the currency used in the application is changed.

2. Edit listing minimum price

In the config.js file, search for variable listingMinimumPriceSubUnits and give a minimum price in currency's subunits (e.g. cents). By default, FTW uses value 0 which means there is no restriction to the price but we recommend that the listing minimum price should be at least the same amount as Stripe fee in the country you are operating. If the listing price is lower, Stripe will not process the payment and the booking fails.

3. Check the currency-config.js file

See the currency-config.js file and make sure the currency is added to the subUnitDivisors array. Most common currencies are already added to the file. If the currency is zero-decimal currency (e.g. JPY) use value 1. Otherwise, the value is usually 100.

└── src
    └── config
        ├── config.js
        └── currency-config.js

Why subunits?

All API requests to Stripe expects amounts to be provided in a currency’s smallest unit. It's also better to calculate using integers than floats to avoid rounding errors.

4. Optional: Format values

Formatting money is done by using React Intl. Component FieldCurrencyInput converts user input to a formatted message and adds the Money object to price attribute of a listing. currency-config.js file affects how prices are formatted by determining how the subunits are converted to the actual unit (e.g. from cents to USD).

5. Optional: Calculate the price in client app side

If you need to calculate the price on client app side use Decimal.js library. Currently, there are two places in FTW where prices are calculated:

• server/api-util/lineItemHelpers.js
• EstimatedBreakdownMaybe.js (which is refactored as EstimatedCustomerBreakdownMaybe.js on FTW-product)

Your Saunatime test listings

If you just started, you likely have a few test Saunatime listings in your Console. These listings use EUR as their currency. Configuring a currency different than EUR will result in an error as the FTW cannot convert the currency of existing listings. You can ignore this error by closing these listings in your Console, which will remove them from the search page as well, and creating new listings.

FTW and multiple currencies

You can have multiple currencies inside a single marketplace, since Flex itself is currency agnostic. There are, however, some caveats that you need to take into account. The default FTW template implementation limits currency to a single currency because of the caveats listed below. This just made things simpler to develop. You can of course change currency handling in your marketplace if you take these caveats into account.

First, a single listing can have only a single price. If you wish to offer the same listing in two different currencies, you need to create two listings with the same content but different currency and price, which means storing the secondary currency price in e.g. public data.

Second, filtering by price becomes problematic. The price filtering is based on the amount only and does not take the currency into account. This can lead into problems if you want to compare prices. You might, for example, have dollars and yens in the same marketplace. One USD is 110 Yen, so the default price filtering will not easily find equally priced items if they are in different currencies.

Third, currency conversions may cause complexity. If most of your users have a credit card in one currency but listings are in a different currency, some conversion costs will take effect.