Currency + multi-store for international networking customers, how do you handle it?
Native Magento store views handle multi-currency cleanly: USD for US, EUR for EU, GBP for UK, AUD for AU, CAD for Canada. Same SKU pool, different pricing visibility per store view.
The architecture decisions:
- Pricing source-of-truth: do you set USD as master and convert via daily ECB / OXR feed, or set each currency as independent (manual pricing per region)? For networking gear, independent pricing per region is the right call, OEM distributor pricing varies by region (an EU Cisco partner might get a different list price than a US partner), and forex fluctuations can’t whipsaw your margins on $50k orders. Daily forex auto-conversion is fine for a $200 access point; it’s wrong for a $25k chassis.
- VAT / GST: EU + UK customers see VAT-inclusive pricing on the storefront (legal requirement under EU consumer law); US + Canada customers see tax-exclusive (added at checkout based on ship-to). AvaTax (Avalara) or Vertex for live tax calculation across 100+ jurisdictions.
- Payment methods: ACH + wire + card + Net-30 for US; SEPA + card + Net-30 for EU; BACS + card + Net-30 for UK; PayID + BPAY + card + Net-30 for AU. Stripe handles most card flows globally; ACH / SEPA / BACS via Plaid / GoCardless / a dedicated B2B payments provider like Resolve or Tipalti.
- Localization: language packs for EU (German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish). Networking gear datasheets are usually English-only, but checkout / customer-account / invoice templates should be localized.
One Magento instance can serve all of this. No multi-instance hack required.