Nov 29, 2015

Kickstarter Lesson #5: Currency Exchange and Problems

As Kickstarter started growing from its base in US, the number of currencies which creators can use to set up their project started to grow quickly. With the majority of the Kickstarter backers still coming from US, creating a project using a non USD currency will often lead to confusion and misinformation. As not everybody is savvy with the exchange rate around the world, failure to give a quick conversion rate to backers in US and EU may deter backers from backing your project. We created Wongamania: Banana Economy using AUD and since AUD is a weaker currency as compared to USD, the pledge reward will seem to be more expensive as compared to other projects offering the similar rewards. So a AUD25 pledge will be seen as USD25 when the actual pledge amount is only USD18.



Other than the initial pledge amount beside the name of the project which will indicate the currency type, the pledge amount on the reward column totally does not reflect the AUD status. Which is why it is important for the creator to help your backers by having the proper converted amount needed to pledge for the different reward tier. It will be optimal to find a helper who can help you create a project in USD, but if you cannot find one, make sure that you make the numbers on your project page as easy to read as possible.

4 comments:

  1. I'm having this exact problem now. It's really annoying as we are in Australia and US backers who aren't logged in will see the amount in AUS and assume its US dollars and it will see much more expensive.

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    Replies
    1. We had to splash the USD amt all over the page. Given that a big majority of the backers still come from USA, it is a necessary evil that we need to conquer.

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  2. Hi Xeo Lye,

    I bumped across your article and am curious to ask. How do you manage to deal with the fluctuation of currency?

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    Replies
    1. U can't. However, I am pretty good at reading currency trends due to my profession so I may recommend the team to let the money sit in the foreign currency a bit longer as long as I see a potential for the currency to move in our favor. Else if the lack of this cashflow will affect business operations, we will need to suck it up and transfer in even if the currency moves against us during the Kickstarter period.

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