A Falsehood Programmers Believe About Currency: All Payment Methods in the Same Currency Is Worth The Same Amount

Published: 03 Jan 2025 at 05:55 +0200

[!NOTE] I drafted this nearly a year ago before the Zim dollar became Zimbabwe gold, ZiG.

I was in the mood of falsehoods and I thought I’d add one to do with money:

All payment methods in the same currency is worth the same amount.

In Zimbabwe, the currency situation can get confusing. Ideally we’re supposed to use Zimbabwean Dollars but nobody trusts that so we use a lot of United States Dollars (and South African Rands) as well. Thing is, all the Zimbabwean ~~dollars~~ gold (ZiG) are worth different amounts:

ZiG cash is the most “valuable” (because it’s scarce),
mobile money and bank accounts use different exchange rates,
even the official exchange rate differs based on the venue (auction vs interbank) and the retailer who can vary by as much as 10%.

US dollars are better but even then there’s a difference between the USD value of bank accounts. Nostro (foreign currency) accounts are worth less if you’re a civil servant (government employee). Outside that nostros are a bit better now though cash is still king.

Bear this in mind when you handle online payments and be careful as to how your payment processor handles various currencies. Some retailers lost a lot of money because of the Argentine peso. Like Zimbabwe, Argentina’s currency is¹ a shit show so they implemented currency controls (like a Coldplay exhcange rate) which brought about a black market. This is inconvenient for tourists so they allowed foreign bank cards to use the black market exchange rate making foreign currency significantly more valuable. People in other countries realized that you could pay in pesos and get a huge discount costing retailers like Amazon a lot of money.

So if you’re dealing with payments, make sure you know how the exchange rate works (or at least rely on a service that does) or else you’ll lose a lot of money.

Maybe I should do a whole falsehoods programmers believe about currency thing? Another one I have in mind is services that insist on showing Zim dollar prices despite there not being a Zim dollar anymore, let alone a local currency that can be used online outside Zimbabwe.

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