Still trying to decide - open my Shopify store in the US or in Japan? (Want to sell to both markets)

[douglerner]

Sorry if some of my questions seem repetitive. I can't believe how long this is taking to sort out in my mind. 🙂

I'm an American living in Japan. I have business bank accounts in both the U.S. and Japan. I want to start with drop-shipping custom printing products and see how it goes.

Some items might be more attractive to people here in Japan. Some might be more interesting to customers in the US. I'm not sure how large the demand will be yet.

I think I understand the different store fees and payment processing fees. What I don't get are currency conversion fees.

For example (and this fluctuates lately), today 1 USD = 146.12 JPY. If I have a Japan-based Shopify store where the money I end up receiving is in JPY and a customer in the US purchases in dollars, what do I get?

My US bank has very good rate conversions. For example, at today's rate I might get 145.9 yen per dollar. On the other hand, I've see some really horrible currency conversion services. The other day I saw one that would convert 1 USD to just 133 JPY!

With Shopify, what happens in a case like this? 

I wish I could open my store so that USD purchases were settled in USD to my US bank account and JPY purchases were settled in JPY to my Japan bank account, but I guess that's not possible, right?

If I have a choice, which do you think is better to go with, considering purchase processing fees and potential currency conversion fees? For example, is "everything to dollars in a US account" generally better?

Thanks.

[douglerner]

Thanks for your reply. While I understand the basic concept, I am curious how good the conversion rate is. Is it a great conversion rate very close to that day's currency exchange rate on the market? Or does Shopify take a lot of conversion fees? That's what I am really curious about.

And are the conversion fees better going from JPY to USD or the other way around? That might help me decide which country to open my shop in.