If your checkout reads the card number to decide which currency to show, Visa says you are doing dynamic currency conversion, and its registration, disclosure and dispute rules apply. Pick the same currency from the shopper's IP address and it counts as multi-currency pricing, and almost none of those rules apply.
The two models look the same on screen, but they move money differently. Under DCC the shopper pays a conversion mark-up and the merchant gets a cut. NatWest found one Spanish accommodation provider charging 13.4% more for paying in pounds. The pages ranking for "DCC vs MCP" are mostly acquirers selling one or the other. Most skip the scheme rule IDs, the UK legal position and the API fields involved. Rules here were checked against the Visa Core Rules (24 October 2026 edition), Mastercard's Transaction Processing Rules (10 June 2025), the UK Payment Services Regulations 2017 and PSP documentation on 30 October 2026.
What Is Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC)?
DCC is a conversion offered at the point of sale. The terminal, ATM or checkout spots a foreign card, quotes the price in the cardholder's billing currency at the provider's own rate, and asks the cardholder to choose. If they accept, the transaction enters the network already in their currency, so the issuer has nothing to convert. Mastercard's rulebook calls it POI currency conversion and states plainly that the merchant or acquirer applies the rate.
The provider's mark-up is the revenue, and the merchant shares in it. Fiserv's published US DCC terms add a 3.5% margin to the wholesale rate and credit the merchant a 0.50% "foreign currency fee" on its DCC turnover. Adyen settles the merchant the original amount plus a share of the mark-up, which shows up as a negative (credit) value in the DCC Markup (NC) column of its settlement details report.
What Is Multi-Currency Pricing (MCP)?
With multi-currency pricing the merchant sets prices in the shopper's currency before payment starts. Visa defines an MCP transaction as one where the merchant displays prices in currencies other than its local one, the transaction currency is one of those displayed, and no DCC takes place (ID# 0030764). The cardholder is charged in the currency they saw. The merchant's acquirer converts to the settlement currency later and charges the merchant for it.
Those conversion fees are published. Stripe adds 2% on a UK account when a payment needs converting, and 1% on a US account. Shopify Payments charges 1.5% for US stores and 2% almost everywhere else, and its automatic pricing passes this to the customer as (price × rate) × (1 + fee) before rounding. The merchant also carries refund FX risk. Stripe's own example: a 60 USD charge settles as 52.80 EUR at 0.88, and a refund at 0.86 debits 51.60 EUR. If the rate had moved the other way, the merchant would have lost the difference.
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About the Author
I'm Tom Wang, an AI Developer & Fintech Developer — building AI agents, crypto payment infrastructure, and cross-border payout systems with Rust, Go, and TypeScript. Based in London, UK.
Currently open to new opportunities in fintech, crypto payments, and AI agent engineering.
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