Google Play Vs Apple Store Currency Conversion

Hi all,

Been hooked on a F2P game for a while but recently started spending some money on the in-game currency and I'm mostly on Apple ecosystem and been buying discounted Apple gift cards to purchase the in-game currency.

Saw the 15% discount on Google Play gift cards recently and since I knew the game was also on Android I thought why not and bought some Google gift cards. I could logon to Android using bluestacks on my laptop to buy the in-game currency.

But I'm realising that buying something that costs $1.49 on Apple store will cost $1.69 on Google Play store which effective cancelled out the "5%" savings I thought I'm getting from gift cards. It maybe only $0.20 but it's basically ~13% difference on the currency conversion. (Hope I'm getting my math correct).

My question: How is Google and Apple currency conversion so significantly different?

Related Stores

Google Play
Google Play
Marketplace
Apple App Store
Apple App Store
Marketplace

Comments

  • +1

    umm why are you relying on google or apple to convert ?

    Just use a non international transaction fee card like Combank Low fee gold CC, latitude CC, ING debit card, Macquire debit, or HSBC debit and so on etc.

    • +1

      If you're buying in app I've only ever seen the option to use local currency. A dev might set the price at US99c and Apple will use their own local currency functionality to decide how that is offered to each country.

      No idea how Google does it, but apparently they use a different exchange rate.

    • When you're buying things in-app (or buying from their App Store) I don't believe there's really any choice as to what sort of conversion rate to use.

      it's basically WYSIWYG: if the price on the Google Play says $1.69 then that's what you pay for, no conversion happening. Similarly for App Store

  • idk what game your playing but prices are normally the same or cheaper for android. Checking just now and an in app item that i paid $14.99 for is $9.99 on android for example.

    • Interesting, maybe because the game developer is based in Hong Kong. and Google does some funny conversion, e.g. HKD -> USD -> AUD shrugs…

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