How Currency Exchange APIs Add Value to SaaS Apps and Websites

Businesses with global audiences or multinational customer segments can improve the global customer reach of their websites, apps and online stores by offering the latest foreign currency exchange data. Across many industries, companies are enhancing the digital customer experience by providing current exchange rates, so customers don’t get “sticker shock” when they complete their online transaction.  

Drive more sales through your digital channels

Consider your own experiences related to foreign currency exchange rates, when:

• Booking a hotel room and paying a deposit to hold your reservation

• Purchasing apparel from an online retailer

• Securing tickets online for a football match, theatrical event , or business conference while you travel overseas

• Paying tuition to a university you’ll be attending in another country.

• Buying foreign securities from a wealth management advisory firm

• Participating in online gaming activities

The internet enables merchants and app developers to reach a global marketplace. Transparency about the latest currency exchange rates can motivate customers to complete an online purchase, instead of making most of their way through the checkout process and seeing a higher price than they expected. This is the case for both B2B and B2C online transactions on popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Wix.

According to Baymard Institute research, between 70 and 75% of online shoppers abandon shopping carts before they complete their transaction.  60 percent of the 1,800 shoppers they surveyed said they canceled their purchase because of unexpected fees - such as shipping costs, exchange variables and other fees they weren’t expecting. Another 23% abandoned their cart because they couldn’t see their total purchase cost before finalizing their transaction. Many of these lost transactions could have been retained if the online shopper could see their product price in their local currency before progressing to the checkout process.  

Currency Exchange Data and Online Business Applications  

For SaaS applications such as XERO Accounting, Sage, Deltek, and Clear Books, the latest foreign exchange rates can help salespeople to create accurate forecasts. Trustworthy, up-to-date foreign exchange data embedded in these cloud-based business applications (and many others) helps businesses to keep their accounts in pristine order.  

XE’s currency data is curated from over 130 of the most credible international rate contributors and is processed by the XE Rate Blender application. Application administrators just need to follow the concise, up-to-date instructions on our Swagger Hub page, GitHub, or on our website to plug the API into their application or website and configure it for their needs. Data feeds can be presented through JSON, XML or CSV formats, and through secure HTTPS encryption protocols.  

A Proven, Secure and Flexible API for Your Business-Critical Applications

Global organizations and consumers have looked to XE as the trusted authority on foreign currency exchange data for over twenty-five years. For business application developers, providing their clients with accurate foreign currency values increase the value of their software and improves the business performance of the companies running the applications which include currency data transmitted through our enterprise-class API.  

Depending on the size of a business, and the industry it operates in, there might be a need for a high volume of currency pair comparisons around the clock or just an occasional lookup from month to month. Daily, hourly, or minute-to-minute exchange updates suit unique business needs. There are over 170 currencies worldwide. Businesses with global market reach need reliable, current information to serve their partners and customers. This data is also helpful as procurement professionals compare and source goods and services from international suppliers.  

Websites and SaaS applications are developed in a wide variety of coding languages, including PHP, JavaScript, Python, and NodeJS. By selecting a currency data API which supports SDKs for these languages, business application managers can minimize the amount of development overhead they need to invest in to serve currency data to website visitors and internal users.  

Is your business looking to expand into new global markets, which means you must keep current on currency values where ever your products are sold? Are you seeking new ways to help your online shoppers understand what their total purchase price will be at checkout?  

Try a 7-day free trial of the XE Currency Data API or select the service package which best fits your needs.

You don’t have to invest significant technical resources to install and configure our service. Contact our Currency Data API Client Relationship Manager for further assistance.