How to run WooCommerce Subscriptions In multiple currencies

Recurring revenue is the part of an international store that goes wrong quietly. The first sign-up from a customer in another country looks fine: they choose a plan, they pay, the subscription is created. The problem shows up a month later, when the renewal runs on its own in the middle of the night, with no customer on the page to pick a currency, and the charge lands in your base currency instead of theirs. Now the subscriber’s card statement does not match what they signed up for, support tickets start, and a perfectly good recurring customer is one confusing line item away from cancelling.

WooCommerce Subscriptions is the canonical recurring-billing extension for WooCommerce. It turns a one-off store into a subscription business, with billing schedules, free trials, sign-up fees, plan switching and automatic renewals. What it does not do, on its own, is hold each subscription in the customer’s own currency across every future renewal. That is the seam where Aelia fits.

This guide walks through what WooCommerce Subscriptions does, where it falls short on international stores, and how the Aelia Currency Switcher (plus the free Subscriptions Integration addon, Prices by Country, Tax Display by Country and PayPal Multi-Account where they apply) closes the gap.

What WooCommerce Subscriptions does

WooCommerce Subscriptions adds recurring billing to WooCommerce. A product becomes a subscription with a billing period and interval, and the plugin handles everything that follows: it creates the subscription, schedules renewals, charges the saved payment method automatically, and manages the subscription through its life, including trials, sign-up fees, upgrades, downgrades, pauses and cancellations.

It is the recurring-revenue backbone for membership sites, box subscriptions, SaaS-style WooCommerce stores, service retainers and any store moving from one-off sales to predictable monthly or annual income. Built and maintained by WooCommerce (Automattic), it has been the default subscriptions extension for the platform for over a decade, and it integrates with the major tokenised payment gateways so renewals can run without the customer present.

Pricing. Annual licence, sold on woocommerce.com, single-site and multi-site tiers, with a year of updates and support. Review the current figure on the WooCommerce.com product page before purchasing, so the number on this post does not date.

Latest version tested. Current WooCommerce Subscriptions branch, against the Aelia Currency Switcher 4.x branch, with the Subscriptions Integration addon.

Key features

• Recurring billing schedules, daily, weekly, monthly or annual periods with custom intervals, so the plan matches how you actually charge.
• Free trials and sign-up fees, a trial window and a one-off joining fee configured per product, separate from the recurring amount.
• Automatic renewals, charges the customer’s saved, tokenised payment method on schedule without the customer present.
• Plan switching, upgrades, downgrades and proration between subscription variations, so customers move tiers without cancelling.
• Customer-managed subscriptions, a “My Account” surface where subscribers can pause, cancel, change address or update their card.
• Renewal and dunning handling, automatic retries and status changes on failed payments, with synchronised renewal dates where you need them.

Where WooCommerce Subscriptions falls short on international stores

The subscription is stored against the WooCommerce base currency. At sign-up, that can be masked: if a customer is browsing in their own currency, the first payment can look correct. The gap opens at renewal. A renewal is a server-side event with no customer on the page to select a currency, so the plugin falls back to the only currency it has reliably recorded against the subscription. Without a multi-currency layer that captures and re-applies the original currency, renewals and re-subscriptions can process in the base currency instead of the one the subscriber signed up in.

This is a documented behaviour, not a guess: with WooCommerce Subscriptions 2.x in particular, renewals or re-subscriptions can be processed in the wrong currency unless the plugin is kept up to date and a multi-currency integration is in place. The knock-on effects are all the expensive kind: a charge that does not match the sign-up amount, tax treatment that flips when the renewal is processed against the base country rather than the subscriber’s, and recurring payments that all settle into a single PayPal balance regardless of the currency they were taken in.

This is the seam where Aelia fits. WooCommerce Subscriptions owns the recurring-billing engine. Aelia owns the international layer that keeps each subscription in its own currency for life.

How Aelia fits with WooCommerce Subscriptions

Compatibility status

Aelia Currency Switcher

The Currency Switcher, with the free Subscriptions Integration addon installed, captures the currency at sign-up and stores it against the subscription, then re-applies it on every automatic renewal. The result is that a subscriber who joined in EUR is charged in EUR at sign-up and in EUR at every renewal after that, with each renewal order recorded in EUR for your books, even though the renewal runs server-side with no customer present. This is the specific mechanism that fixes the wrong-currency-renewal problem described above: the currency is no longer inferred at renewal time, it is remembered from sign-up. Requires Currency Switcher 3.3.11.140619 or later and the free Subscriptions Integration addon. Learn more about the Currency Switcher.

Aelia Prices by Country

The Currency Switcher converts the recurring price; Prices by Country sets it per region. If you want your subscription to cost €13 a month in Germany and €13.20 a month in Spain, that is country logic, not currency conversion, and the Currency Switcher alone will not produce it. The intended pattern is that Prices by Country sets the regional recurring price, the Currency Switcher converts and displays it, and Subscriptions schedules the renewals. Because Prices by Country writes to the product price, and a subscription locks its amount at sign-up, confirm on staging how a regional price interacts with existing subscriptions and future renewals before going live. Learn more about the Prices by Country.

Aelia Tax Display by Country

A renewal that lands with the wrong tax treatment is as damaging as one with the wrong currency. Tax Display by Country detects the subscriber’s country by geolocation and switches displayed prices between gross and net per your rules, so the recurring price a customer sees, and the renewal that follows, agree on whether tax is shown. It runs alongside Subscriptions without touching the billing schedule. Learn more about the Tax Display by Country.

Aelia PayPal Standard Multi-Account Gateway

If subscribers pay in more than one currency, settling every recurring payment into a single PayPal account loses money to FX conversion on each renewal, every month, for the life of the subscription. PayPal Multi-Account watches the order’s currency and routes the payment to the matching PayPal account, so a EUR subscription renews into your EUR balance and a USD subscription into your USD one. On recurring revenue, that saved spread compounds. Learn more about the PayPal Multi-Account.

Stack recommendation

Setup notes

Install in this order. The order matters because Aelia Foundation Classes (AFC) is the shared framework all premium Aelia plugins load against, and the Subscriptions Integration addon should go on last, once both plugins it bridges are active.

1. Install and activate the free Aelia Foundation Classes (AFC) plugin.
2. Install Aelia Currency Switcher (3.3.11.140619 or later). Configure the base currency before adding products. Choose automatic exchange rates (Open Exchange Rates, OFX, Turkish Central Bank) or manual per-currency pricing.
3. Install WooCommerce Subscriptions, and make sure it is updated to a current version so renewals and re-subscriptions process correctly.
4. Install the free Subscriptions Integration addon, after both the Currency Switcher and WooCommerce Subscriptions are active.
5. (Optional) Install Aelia Prices by Country for regional recurring pricing, then test how a regional price behaves with a new subscription on staging.
6. (Optional) Install Aelia Tax Display by Country and Aelia PayPal Multi-Account for cross-border tax display and currency-matched PayPal settlement.

Two settings to watch. First, do not run a second multi-currency plugin alongside the Aelia Currency Switcher; a duplicate currency layer will fight the conversion and is the most common cause of a renewal taken in the wrong currency. Second, before launch, create a test subscription in a non-base currency and let a renewal run (or trigger one) on staging, to confirm the renewal charges and records in the sign-up currency, not the base currency.

What Aelia customers say

The Currency Switcher “automagically makes doing cross-border business seamless”.

Amie, femMED.  See more Aelia testimonials.

FAQ

Does WooCommerce Subscriptions work with multi-currency out of the box?

Not on its own. The recurring amount is stored against the WooCommerce base currency, and renewals run server-side with no customer to select a currency. With the Aelia Currency Switcher and the free Subscriptions Integration addon installed, the sign-up currency is captured and re-applied to every renewal, so the subscription stays in the customer’s currency for life.

Do I need a free integration addon?

Yes. WooCommerce Subscriptions needs the free Subscriptions Integration addon from Aelia, installed after both the Currency Switcher and WooCommerce Subscriptions are active. It is what bridges the recurring-billing engine to the multi-currency layer; without it, renewals can fall back to the base currency.

Will subscription renewals be charged in the right currency?

Yes, with the Subscriptions Integration addon in place: the currency is recorded against the subscription at sign-up and re-applied on every automatic renewal, so the charge matches what the subscriber signed up for. If you are on WooCommerce Subscriptions 2.x, update the plugin as well, because older 2.x builds can process renewals or re-subscriptions in the wrong currency.

Can I set different subscription prices per country, not just converted prices?

Aelia Prices by Country sets the recurring price per region, so a plan can cost €13 a month in one country and €13.20 in another, rather than a single converted figure. Because it writes to the product price and subscriptions lock their amount at sign-up, confirm on staging how a regional price interacts with new and existing subscriptions before going live.

What happens to tax on renewals when the country changes?

The currency does not change the tax treatment; the country does. Aelia Tax Display by Country switches displayed prices between gross and net by the subscriber’s country, so the price shown at sign-up and the renewal that follows agree on whether tax is included.

Get WooCommerce Subscriptions and Aelia running together

For a subscription business selling internationally, the shortest path to renewals that always charge in the right currency is the Aelia Currency Switcher running underneath WooCommerce Subscriptions with the free Subscriptions Integration addon, and Prices by Country, Tax Display by Country and PayPal Multi-Account layered on where regional pricing, cross-border tax and currency-matched settlement matter. Currency Switcher licence (1 site, annual), £69.00 ex. VAT. Licence, updates and support. 14-day free trial. 30-day money-back guarantee. Diego personally answers tickets.

Compatibility tested against: WooCommerce 8.x, WordPress 6.x, PHP 7.4+, Aelia Currency Switcher 4.x, Aelia Foundation Classes (AFC) 2.4.9.230616+, WooCommerce Subscriptions current branch, Subscriptions Integration addon. Last updated: 2026-06-24. Source for compatibility notes: Aelia Currency Switcher, 3rd-party plugin compatibility.