DCC (Dynamic Currency Conversion)

What is the DCC service?

DCC is the dynamic currency conversion service that offers the acquirer the option of making a payment in the home currency of their Visa or Mastercard.

The service is available to merchants that have Banca Sella as an acquirer and can be activated for free.

How does it work?

Once the currency is shown, after the acquirer enters the card data on the payment page, they are offered the option of paying in the store currency, if it’s EUR or in the card’s currency.
In the first case the conversion is done by the issuer, in the second by the acquirer.

Benefits for the buyer:

• payment in the card’s currency

• certainty that the right amount is charged

• transparent verification of the expense

Benefits for the merchant:

• Offering to the buyer the ability to pay in the card’s home currency improves the payment UX, therefore, increases the conversion rate, without having to resort to multi-currency models, where the foreign exchange risk is on the merchant.

Information requirements and UX

Use of the DCC service complies with a set of informational and behavioural requirements to ensure transparency and a proper shopping experience to the buyer.

Payment pages

Payment pages should contain the following information:

1. currency symbol and total price of products/services in the merchant's currency;

2. currency symbol and total price of the products/services in the currency of the payment card;

3. applied exchange rate, indicating separately:

   1. exchange rate used for DCC conversion;

   2. markup applied upon the conversion by the acquirer.

The end customer should be able to freely choose to use the DCC service or not.

Therefore, to meet this requirement it is necessary that:

1. the customer can choose whether to pay in their card currency using DCC or to pay in the merchant's currency. The option selected by default must be the one corresponding to payment in the merchant's currency;

2. the payment page must not incentivise the use of DCC through peculiar or misleading formatting.

Payment receipt

If the buyer has chosen to use DCC, the following information must be correctly stated on the payment summary page, in the payment receipt e-mail and in any other communication sent to the buyer:

1. Currency symbol and total amount of products/services in the local currency of the merchant;

2. currency symbol and total price of products/services in the merchant's local currency/DCC currency;

3. the words "Transaction Currency” or "Transaction Amount" to be inserted before or after the DCC currency code or symbol;

4. the exchange rate used for the DCC conversion and the markup applied upon the conversion;

5. indication that the customer was offered a choice of multiple currencies. For example: "Banca Sella offers a choice of payment currencies. The amount, currency and exchange rate indicated reflect the conditions applied to the selected currency during payment."

6. the indication of the party to whom the conversion was entrusted (information obtainable in response to API calls in the dcc/source field);

7. the summary of the payment data must be delivered to the payer and stored on a durable backup. To classify the e-mail as such, the notification must be sent via traceable automatisms that allow to trace the date, time, and e-mail address to which it was sent.

In case of failure or incorrect compilation/display of the above information by the Merchant, the Circuits may proceed with the application of sanctions against the Acquirer, the latter reserves the right to charge them to the Merchant.

Integration guidelines

When using Axerve's payment pages, no additional integrations are required beyond those necessary for the normal operation of the pages. Once the DCC service is activated, the payment page and confirmation e-mail from Axerve are shown in the version containing the choice options and information provided by the circuits.

If you wish to provide your own confirmation of purchase page, the information regarding the application of DCC is provided according to the directions below:

Server-to-Server Integration

In case you want to build a custom payment page, via the REST API you can retrieve the information that must be shown to the merchant when providing the DCC service.

Integration should include the following calls:

• POST payment/create

• GET payment/detail

• POST payment/submit

The payment/detail response will contain the DCC object reporting the information needed to build a page that complies with the transparency and UX requirements.

1"dcc": 
2    {
3    "currency": "GBP",
4    "eligible": "TRUE",
5    "amount": "16.0729380",
6    "disclaimerText": "The exchange rate applied is ECB's rate at the time of the transaction, increased by a 5% commission charge.",
7    "exchangeRate": "0.884",
8    "source": "Banca Sella SpA",
9    "Fee": "5%",
10    }