you need to the ability to accept foreign currency from your customers

If you have read my web article “The Day the Dollar Dies” you know there will be a sudden, worldwide run on the dollar if and when the tipping point is reached and the people of the world, including the people of the United States, suddenly realize that the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar is plummeting.

If and when that day arrives, I want to be able to toggle my web site over to a different currency in a matter of seconds. So if you went to buy one of my products on that day, you would see that the price was the same, at a time when all other prices in the U.S. were skyrocketing, but that the currency had been changed from U.S. dollars (USD) to Canadian dollars (CAD).

Your credit card would no longer work. Your credit card provider would cancel it in the first hours after the run on the U.S. dollar started. But your U.S. dollar debit card would still work. When you use it to buy my book, assuming I can toggle over to CAD, it will simply take from your account as many USD as it took to buy, say, $29.95 of CAD at that moment.

You will be displeased by the amount, but it should be clear because of my toggling over to CAD that I did not raise my prices; rather, the U.S. government lowered the purchasing power of its dollar. Not my fault. I am no “greedy, price-gouging” retailer—as U.S. politicians will claim all U.S. retailers are when the dollar dies.

I am just a guy who went oot and set up a way to switch to charging Canadian dollars for my products, eh?

So I have started researching how to do this. I originally thought I could just go to a control panel on my Yahoo store and change the “currency” setting from USD to CAD.

Nope.

Indeed, Yahoo store refuses to allow any currency other than USD. Part of the reason is they charge a percentage of each transaction and they can’t be bothered converting the foreign currency sale amount to USD.

When I expressed surprise that I have to use USD in this age of globalization, the Yahoo guy on the phone said the USD is the world’s most popular currency.

As you would expect if you read my recent book How to Protect Your Life Savings from Hyperinflation & Depression, 2nd edition, I exploded with laughter at that.

Yeah, and it’s going to be the least popular currency on earth about an hour after the run on the dollar starts.

Someone needs to tell Marissa Mayer and the other boy and girl geniuses at Yahoo that if I need to toggle over to CAD or other non-US currencies on the day the dollar dies, Yahoo and companies like them REALLY need to toggle over. If your business or the company that you work for can only charge USD, and the USD dies, you and your company will die financially. On the day the dollar dies, Yahoo will die if its merchants can only charge USD. And so will all similarly-situated companies.

But, hey, I am just a mouse trying to avoid being stepped on in a room full of panicky elephants writing books for my fellow mice. Yahoo won’t let me toggle over to CAD, so I need to find someone who will or set up a second non-Yahoo store that can do that. Yahoo will be one of the panicky elephants if and when this happens, along with the U.S. government.

PayPal seems highly international. As is their parent company eBay. But I am not sure they are the best alternative. However, at the moment, they seem to be the only alternative I have figured out. In the room full of panicky elephants, the non-best alternative, like the one-eyed man in the land of the blind, may be king.

John T. Reed

You need the ability to accept payment in foreign currency from your customers