Quote:
Originally Posted by samosa
I looked into my account page and found that the gift card monies are being stored as Hong Kong dollars... It's interesting that I bought the gift card in Aussie dollars and then loaded it up in the Indian store but it is saved as Hong Kong dollars. Until recently I'd only been buying books in Hong Kong dollars and they can tell from my IP address I'm in Hong Kong...  |
Others have had payments processed in HK dollars too, but it hasn't ever happened to me.
This is just a guess, but what might be happening is that the HK dollar is sometimes used as an intermediate currency when converting minor currencies like NZ/Aus dollar to other "minor" currencies like Indian rupee. In the old days this was always done using US dollars, but now the euro or HK dollar are often used.
Two exchanges are needed to convert NZ dollars to Indian rupees using an intermediate currency: NZ dollar --> HK dollar --> Indian rupee for example, but it works out cheaper than converting direct from NZ dollars to Indian rupees, because conversion fees are much lower on the HK dollar. But then charging in HK dollars would mean that only one exchange is needed, which saves even more.