Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC)

The terminal supports DCC. DCC permits the customer to pay an amount that is presented in their own currency, rather than the currency of the merchant.

DCC is only possible when:

  • DCC has been configured in the terminal,
  • A chip card is used,
  • The currency on the chip card is different to the merchant’s currency,
  • The card range is enabled for DCC in the terminal,
  • There is no cashback,
  • The transaction is a purchase or refund,
  • The card is not a ‘national’ card.

Refunds require special handling, as detailed below.

When DCC can apply in a purchase the terminal will make an online request to find out if DCC can be offered. If DCC is available then the cardholder is prompted to choose between the original amount in the merchant currency or the converted amount in their card’s currency.

If they choose DCC then the transaction continues in the merchant’s currency, i.e. the transaction currency does not actually change, but the transaction amount is adjusted so that the amount they see on their card statement is the amount that they were shown on screen.

DCC affects the ECR in two ways:

Disclaimer texts

DCC receipts require a DCC disclaimer to be printed on the receipt. The receipt data includes a DCC disclaimer text in English.

The disclaimer texts are, however, subject to change. If the DCC provider specifies a new disclaimer text, that change may take some time to be implemented in the terminal. The receipt data, therefore, also includes the individual data elements that allow an ECR to build its own DCC disclaimer text.

Disclaimer texts also change according to the card issuer, and according to the transaction type, and even according to who is authorising the transaction. The disclaimer text in the receipt data is valid at the point where the payment application is built, but the disclaimer texts can change over time according to rule changes so the ECR should be aware of its responsibilities here.

DCC and refunds

When a refund that is made to a card that is eligible for DCC, the ECR must indicate if DCC was performed on the original transaction. This is covered in CheckDccOnOriginalTransaction

The intention here is that if a purchase was done using DCC then the refund should also be done using DCC, even though this may mean that the refunded amount may not be the same as the purchase amount, due to exchange rate changes in the time between the two transactions.