Currency configurations

Change marketplace currency

Stripe is the default payment processor in Sharetribe. If you are using the default payment integration, please confirm that Stripe supports the currency you intend to use.

You can find the currency configuration in the configDefault.js file. The currency configuration must be in the ISO 4217 currency code, e.g. USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, etc. The default value is USD.

You may also need to update the mergeCurrency function in configHelpers.js to use the default currency instead of the hosted one. At the moment, Sharetribe onboarding sets a default currency for your marketplace, even though the currency is not directly editable in Console.

const mergeCurrency = (hostedCurrency, defaultCurrency) => {
- const currency = hostedCurrency || defaultCurrency;
+ const currency = defaultCurrency;
  const supportedCurrencies = Object.keys(subUnitDivisors);
  if (supportedCurrencies.includes(currency)) {
    return currency;
  } else {
    console.error(
      `The given currency (${currency}) is not supported.
      There's a missing entry on subUnitDivisors`
    );
    return null;
  }
};

Edit listing minimum price

If you are using the newest version of The Sharetribe Web Template, you can edit your listing minimum price through Console. You need to specify the minimum price as the subunits of the currency you are using, i.e. if you are using dollars, 500 would set the minimum price for a listing at 5 dollars.

You can also set the value as 0, meaning there is no minimum price. We recommend that the minimum listing price be at least the same as Stripe's minimum charge amount in the country you are operating. If the listing price is lower than Stripe's minimum charge amount, Stripe will not process the payment and the transaction will fail.

If you're not using the newest version of The Sharetribe Web Template, or if you prefer to use local configuration files you can adjust the listingMinimumPriceSubUnits variable in configDefault.js. The variable listingMinimumPriceSubUnits defines the minimum price a customer can give a listing.

If you want to allow listings with no price, you will need to add a new transaction process where you have removed pricing and payment related actions.

Currency subunits

The settingsCurrency.js file specifies an array of currency sub-units the template uses to format currencies correctly. The most common currencies are already included in the file. If the currency is a zero-decimal currency (e.g. JPY) it uses value 1. Otherwise, the value is usually 100.

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.

Formatting currency

Formatting money is done by using React Intl. The component FieldCurrencyInput converts user input to a formatted message and adds the Money object to the price attribute of a listing. All currency is formatted specified by the value set in the configDefault.js file.

Calculating the price client-side

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

• server/api-util/lineItemHelpers.js

• EstimatedCustomerBreakdownMaybe.js

Using multiple currencies

You can have multiple currencies inside a single marketplace, since Sharetribe itself is currency agnostic. There are, however, some caveats that you need to take into account. By default, the template 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.