How do I set my currency and take international payments?

How do I set my currency and take international payments?

Ski schools serve a famously international clientele — a school in the French Alps might take bookings from British, Dutch, American, and Australian families in the same week. The platform handles this with a simple model: your school works in one currency, students can browse in theirs, and a payment is taken in the currency that lesson is priced in.

Set your school's default currency

1. From your dashboard, open Schools
2. Tap Edit School on the school you want to change
3. Find the Default Currency dropdown and pick your currency
4. Save your changes

New schools default to euros (EUR). Every lesson price you enter from then on is in that currency, and it's what students are charged at checkout.

Supported currencies

Twelve currencies are available:

• EUR — euro
• GBP — British pound
• USD — US dollar
• CHF — Swiss franc
• CAD — Canadian dollar
• AUD — Australian dollar
• JPY — Japanese yen
• NOK — Norwegian krone
• SEK — Swedish krona
• DKK — Danish krone
• PLN — Polish złoty
• CZK — Czech koruna

Pick the currency of your bank account and your local market. The platform doesn't choose for you based on your resort's country — a Swiss school can run in EUR if that suits its clientele, though most schools match their domestic currency.

What international students see while browsing

The site header has a currency selector. It defaults to a sensible guess from the visitor's browser language — a visitor with US English settings sees dollars, a Norwegian visitor sees kroner — and they can switch at any time; the choice is remembered.

While browsing lessons and comparing schools, prices are converted to the visitor's chosen currency using live exchange rates refreshed roughly hourly. This is a display convenience only — it helps a family in London judge whether your group lesson is good value without doing mental arithmetic. The converted figure is indicative, not a quoted price.

In the booking widget itself, prices are shown in the actual charge currency, so there's no surprise at checkout.

What students actually pay

Every booking is charged in the currency that lesson is priced in, which is normally your own:

1. The student books and pays by card through Stripe Checkout
2. The charge is made in your lesson's currency — normally your school's Default Currency
3. The booking record stores the amount and currency actually paid

If the student's card is issued in another currency, their bank or card issuer converts at its own rate, exactly as when they pay for dinner in resort. You don't need to do anything for this to work — international cards are accepted as standard through Stripe.

How the money settles

Every online payment is a charge on your own Stripe account — see how to connect Stripe and receive payments [blocked]. For international payments specifically:

• The charge is created in your lesson currency on your own Stripe account, so it lands in your Stripe balance in the currency you priced the lesson in; if your account settles in another currency, Stripe converts it
• Find a Ski School's commission is collected from that charge as a Stripe application fee, in the same currency; Stripe converts the fee into our own currency on its side, which does not change what you are charged
• The rest of the payment stays in your Stripe balance, and Stripe pays it out to your bank on the schedule you control in your Stripe Dashboard
• Stripe charges its card-processing fee to your Stripe account. It is not added to the learner's total
• Currency-conversion or bank fees may still apply on your Stripe account or at your bank if its settlement currency differs from the charge currency; check Stripe's account-specific information

Per-lesson currency overrides

Individual lessons can carry their own currency, which takes precedence over the school default for that lesson. This exists for edge cases, but use it sparingly:

• A single checkout can't mix currencies — Stripe rejects mixed-currency payments, so a single payment must use its quoted currency. Equipment reserved with a lesson is paid at collection separately; standalone rentals use their own checkout
• Students comparing your lessons see a more coherent page when everything is priced in one currency

For almost every school, one currency across all lessons is the right call.

Changing your currency later

Switching the Default Currency changes the label, not the numbers — a lesson priced at 80 stays at 80. Nothing is converted for you. If you move from CHF to EUR, open each lesson afterwards and set its own currency: it then tells you that the options are still priced in the old one, and offers to convert their amounts at today's rate so you can check them and save — or you can simply type the new prices yourself.

Past bookings are unaffected: each one keeps a record of the amount and currency it was actually paid in, so your reporting and reconciliation stay accurate across the change.

What the platform doesn't do

To be clear about the boundaries:

• No mixed-currency checkout — one booking is charged in one currency: the one that lesson is priced in. The browsing-time conversion is still for reference only
• No per-resort currency — multi-resort schools share one school currency
• No automatic price conversion — changing your currency never recalculates your stored prices. The lesson editor can convert them at today's rate, and shows you the old and new figures to check before anything is saved

If your situation is unusual — for example, you operate across a currency border and genuinely need split pricing — talk to support before building a workaround with per-lesson overrides.