Like other cloud services, AWS is usually paid for by credit card — but since the fees are in US dollars, you can end up getting slugged with conversion fees. You can now avoid that by setting Australian dollars as your preferred currency.
The Australian dollar is one of 11 new currencies now offered as a “native” option by AWS (New Zealand is also on the list). If you change this preference in account settings, your bill will be converted to Australian dollars at a “competitive exchange rate” before being charged. Right now, $1US is being converted to $1.298 Australian, which is fairly reasonable.
Note that the basic rate for AWS products will still be set in US dollars — we won’t see official “local” pricing. This option also only works for Visa and MasterCard; if you’re using a work Amex card, you’ll have to stick with the US dollar option.
New – Set Preferred Payment Currency for your AWS Account [AWS Blog]
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One response to “You Can Now Pay For AWS In Australian Dollars”
However you need to be aware that some banks will still charge you an overseas transaction fee if the recipient bank is not in Australia. We got caught with this on a recent cruise, billed in AUD but via a UK based bank and slugged an extra 3%.
You need to be careful as to what your credit card terms say. For example, if I buy on one credit card from Groupon, I get charged a fee because it’s processed outside Australia.
see http://www.hsbc.com.au/1/PA_ES_Content_Mgmt/content/australia/common/pdf/personal/cc-fees-charges.pdf
“Overseas transaction charge – payable when you make a transaction on your account in a currency other than Australian dollars, or you make a transaction on your account in any currency (including AUD) that is processed by the card scheme or billed by the merchant outside of Australia”
Agree that for most cards, the conversion rate is garbage, so accepting an Amazon rate would possibly be preferable.