ZAR not working with Stripe

Hello @daigo75

Thank you for getting back to us with your findings on narrowing down how Stripe CC fields cannot be used with PayPal Checkout enabled and using Aelia Currency Switcher for WooCommerce to checkout with ZAR as the currency even though the store base currency is set to Euro.

While I do hear your concerns, please do note that the intention was not meant to blame the currency converter, or to upsell the multi-currency extension sold via WooCommerce.com. What I did mean was that Since Stripe works with ZAR as the base currency, and I can use Multi-currency extension to checkout as ZAR even though the base currency is set to euro, the best source of further support here would be your team.

We don’t see similar reports quite often, so I initially thought of recommending a conflict test, but then I felt reaching out to a dedicated team that supports the currency converter extension would lead to a faster resolution.

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Regarding the issue itself, I’ve left a response in the other forum topic. For anyone else landing on this topic and facing a similar issue, please subscribe to this GitHub report for any further updates/discussions regarding the same: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-gateway-paypal-express-checkout/issues/853

I’ll mark this topic as solved for now. Please feel free to open a new topic if you have any other questions.

@aashik our comment was more directed at the fact that, in our opinion, the assessment was based on assumptions that turned out to be incorrect.

Issue described by the client

My customers from South Africa cannot order with the currency set to ZAR (Aelia Currency Switcher plugin) and Stripe.

Assessment process
1. Customers can’t pay with Stripe when the Aelia Currency Switcher enabled and ZAR as the active currency.
The original statement was unclear. Customers can’t pay in ZAR…
1. Because, when they try, the transaction fails?
2. Because Stripe doesn’t even try to process the payment?
3. Because they can’t even enter the card details?
These are significantly different scenarios, which require a different troubleshooting approach. Perhaps, the assumption was that the issue was #1, and this led to the second step.

2. Verify that WooCommerce and Stripe work with ZAR. The test, as you indicated, showed that the issue doesn’t present itself with just WooCommerce configured to use ZAR, and Stripe as the gateway.

Conclusion: since the issue doesn’t occur with just WooCommerce and Stripe, the issue depends the multi-currency element.

At this stage, the customer was redirected back to us. As we explained to the her, we already knew that the Currency Switcher couldn’t be the cause, and explained why. That should have been the second incentive to look into the issue into more detail.

As you said:

We don’t see similar reports quite often

As a matter of fact, we do. A sizeable portion of the cases we receive are about issues that seem to be caused by our Currency Switcher, but they turn out to be due to other elements that just happen to work, by coincidence, in a single-currency environment.

This case is another example: if anyone tried to configure WooCommerce (single currency) with ZAR, PayPal Checkout and Stripe, they would come across the same issue reported here. Probably, nobody reported this because PayPal doesn’t support ZAR (or TRY, ARS or CNY, for that instance), therefore merchants who run a shop that only accepts one of these currencies don’t even bother with such a setup.
When a multi-currency element is introduced, the combination of factors that lead to the error is more likely to happen. This can lead to the wrong assumption that, since the issue started with the introduction of a multi-currency plugin, then that plugin is the cause, even though it has nothing to do with it.

Our suggestions
1. Find more details about an issue, before looking for a conflict. In our support process, unless we know for sure that the error is caused by a conflict, excluding and isolating other plugins, themes or code snippets, is one of the last steps we recommend, usually after we have exhausted other options.
2. It’s a good idea to involve 3rd party developers in the conversation (in this case, us). However, we would recommend to listen to the feedback they provide. We knew that the Currency Switcher was unlikely to be the cause of the issue. That should have excluded it from the list of possible elements, yet it seemed that the focus remained on it, on the ground of it being a 3rd party extension, “not officially supported”.
3. If you come across any issue that you deem might be due to one of our solutions, you can reach us directly. It’s more effective to communicate between technical teams, and it can lead to a faster resolution, especially if the end user/merchant has limited technical knowledge.

As always, we remain available in case you have any questions. Thanks again for your time.

Additional note
Most probably, the issue described at https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/south-african-rands-payment-not-working-2/ was the same one. The site owned by @ohgodknows also runs the PayPal Express Checkout plugin, which, as we discussed, throws a script error when it finds an unsupported currency.

Now the merchant is using a different Stripe plugin, which seems to be loading the UI in a different way and it’s not affected by the JS errors, but we would feel quite confident that the issue was the same.