Base Currency

This article is meant to explain the relationship of base currency and points in the platform.

The base currency of your platform is the currency in which you will be invoiced and the currency in which your points are representing (1 point = 1 Base Currency). It is set at the time your account is created and cannot be changed after it is initially setup. No matter where the recipient of an award is located, they will always receive points based on the base currency of the platform. This means if I award two people in two different countries 100 points, in a USD based platform they will each get 100 points representing $100 USD. (Note: We use a third party real time conversion via a direct API to get the exact conversion.)

To provide a seamless experience, costs of redemption options are also converted into points. This means that the cost of an item is converted into the base currency and then rounded to the nearest point value. If I am a user in Japan who is on a USD based platform, a ¥5500 Amazon item will appear as 51 points. The user doesn’t see that the ¥5500 is being converted into USD ($50.88) and then rounded to the next whole amount. Because of fluctuating exchange rates the numbers in this example will not be exact.

NOTE: purchasing power of parity (PPP) impacts the point cost of items as prices are adjusted to account for local purchasing power. If your organization utilizes this feature, the above calculation for the point cost of items differs slightly.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to your Client Success Representative for additional support.