When selling globally, you have to make sure your customers receive the best shopping experience. The store language is perhaps one of the first things to pop up in your mind. But Magento multi currency is just as crucial.

It allows your customers to view prices in their local currency in the first place. But what's more important, it helps to avoid cart abandonment and checkout bounce rates. Your customers know exactly how much they'll be charged.

Conveniently, Magento provides you the multi currency option out of the box. So you don't need to install any additional software for this. Magento 2 multi currency setup includes several steps. And in this guide, we're going to walk you through all of them.

Configure Magento 2 Currency Options

When you configure Magento multi currency the first thing to do is set what currencies will be available in your store. Here is how you do it:

1. Navigate to Stores > Configuration > General > Currency Setup.

2. Choose the corresponding options for Base, Default Display, and Allowed Currencies.

  • Base Currency — currency for online transactions or currency in which you take payments in your store.
  • Default Display Currency — currency in which prices are displayed by default.
  • Allowed Currencies — all currencies you want to accept in your store that are displayed in the currency switcher on the storefront.

Magento 2 Currency Options

Note: you have to choose your base currency in the Allowed Currencies field as well.

3. Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog > Price to specify the scope for your currency.

Catalog Price Scope in Magento 2

e.g. you may want to set the US Dollar ($) as a base currency for your US store and Euro (€) — for your European store and take transactions in these currencies correspondingly.

Don't forget to Save your Magento 2 currency configuration. Once you set allowed currencies, a currency switcher will appear on the storefront.

Currency Switcher in Magento 2

Configure Magento Currency Rates

Setting up currency rates is one the most important steps in Magento 2 multi currency configuration. Currency rates in Magento 2 define how prices are converted and displayed in your store.

They can be set up manually and automatically. So, you can choose what aligns with your strategy best. To import or set current rates in Magento navigate to Stores > Currency > Currency Rates.

Magento 2 Currency Rates

Configure Currency Symbols

Finally, Magento 2 multi currency rates setup comes down to setting the currency symbols. To do that:

1. Go to Stores > Currency > Currency Symbols.

2. Specify the symbols for each currency or Use the Standard values that are already defined.

Currency Symbols in Magento 2

3. Save your changes and clear Magento cache before checking them on the storefront.

Once all the steps are taken, you'll have a currency switcher configured and ready to use. This is a great advantage since your customers can see the prices in the currencies they are familiar with.

Yet, there is a little inconvenience. Once people visit your store, they see the default currency which may not be the one they know or want to pay in. Thus they'll need to look for the manual switcher and take extra steps.

Not very encouraging, is it?

Thus, you might consider the automation of this process.

Use Auto Currency Switcher

By default, Magento 2 doesn't offer the auto currency switching functionality. But if you use Magento 2 Currency Switcher, you can do this with little to no effort.

The extension detects the IP address of users and automatically displays prices in their local currency. On top of that, you get a chance to set the default currency for each country and round off the prices in your store.

All these small steps improve customers' shopping experience and make them more likely to buy. Check out this short video to learn how to configure an auto currency switcher in Magento: