Currency swapping

[Changaco]

Reticketing from #182.

From https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-now-supports-us-dollars-f9484e3008f8:

We currently don’t support currency conversion, so you can’t convert your earnings before withdrawing them to your bank account. We know from experience that sending euros to a US account doesn’t always work, for example. To alleviate these problems we’re thinking of implementing automatic fee-less currency swapping inside Liberapay.

Relevant thread: https://toot.cat/@jamey/3706990

[kyrias]

Alternatively, it could be useful to be able to perform manual conversions between currencies, which I just stumbled upon wanting when I had euros in my wallet, but the person I wanted to donate to only accepts USD, so had to deposit more money.

[Changaco]

The reason why we don't have currency conversion is because our payment processor doesn't support it.

In fact I've recently been told that they legally can't provide currency conversion because they don't have the license for that.

Finally, their list of prohibited businesses (from liberapay/liberapay.org#29) contains "forex" right there at the top, so it may not be legally possible for us to support any kind of currency swapping.

This brings me to the conclusion that #374 may be inevitable in the long run.

[rugk]

Note that some banks require fees for such a conversion (at least when sending money to other accounts of a different currency), so it likely is not a good idea of you if you try to make it for free. 😄

[Changaco]

In fact I've recently been told that they legally can't provide currency conversion because they don't have the license for that.

I asked Mangopay's legal department about this and they disavowed their colleague's statement. They say that the lack of support for currency conversion on their side is not due to a legal issue.

[Changaco]

I also asked Mangopay about the currency swapping system envisioned here, they said they have nothing against it.

[rugk]

So? AFAIK you can already accept donations in both currencies, but real swapping is not there yet, is not it?

[Changaco]

Closing as obsolete since Mangopay kicked us out.