Workaround for Alipay Currency Error in Stripe

We use Stripe to process credit card payments and have decided to use Alipay to receive payments from China. However, we cannot proceed as we get an error message saying that the currency options are invalid.

How can we set up ConfTool to correct our currency option settings?

If you get the following error message…

“STRIPE: Error creating session for checkout: Invalid currency options ‘usd’.
The payment method ‘alipay’ only supports the following currencies: ‘cny’, ‘eur’.”

… then there is a problem with your currency configuration in Stripe.

In the case above, the main currency of your Stripe account and your bank account is probably EUR, but you entered USD as currency in ConfTool. Now Stripe would have to exchange payments via Alipay twice: First from CNY to USD (as Alipay only supports CNY) and then from USD to EUR.

However, there is a workaround in ConfTool for this problem.

Please proceed as follows:

1. Enable the alternative currency option in ConfTool:
Overview => Settings => Main Settings for Participant Registration
Enable the expert settings and then set “Multi Currency Support” to “Yes” (see Image 1). Save the settings.

2. Go to the currency settings:
Overview => Settings => Manage Currencies and Exchange Rates
…and create CNY (short code ¥‎) as new currency and enter the current exchange rate. This entry should look like this (image 2):

NB: You can update the exchange rate any time you like.

3. Go to the payment settings:
Overview => Settings => Manage Payment Options
Then scroll down to the section “Payment via Stripe” and enable the option “Use CNY as Currency for Alipay” (image 3):

4. Please test your settings by doing a test payment.

Please find detailed information in section Using Stripe for Receiving Payments via Alipay From China.