Currency Conversion Tools

[quadrant6]

I'm working on a site that, below the local price (AUD), needs to display the approx price converted into a couple of other currencies like so:


Product..description
Price: AUD $10

Approx EUR: 5.20
Approx GBP: 3.40


Does anyone know of a good reliable free or reasonably cheap web service that I can use to get the latest exchange rates?

I've found these so far:


Currency Exchange using PHP & XML
(http://apptools.com/phptools/xml/currency/index.php#picker)
- Free
- Gets and parses data from Euro Central Bank:
http://www.ecb.int/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/index.en.html#data

SrikeIron Currency Rates Tool
(http://www.strikeiron.com/ProductPricingDetail.aspx?p=227)
- US$9.95 per month for 250 hits
- Base rate seems to be fixed as USD

XE Currency Data Feed
(http://www.xe.com/dfs/)
- US$540 annual fee!
- Supplies either CSV or xml

[ralph l mayo]

The first one you found looks fine to me. The bank's XML is very straightforward and doing your own implementation or using the helper you linked would both be pretty trivial.

The only problems are that (a) it only updates once a day and (b) as a free service it's presented as-is, and if one day it gives you some off numbers and you use them to make a transaction and get burned you don't have any recourse. You may not even have any recourse with the $10/mo one, but I imagine you do get a reasonable guarantee with the expensive one.

I don't know that (a) is a practical concern in most cases, but wars, coups, terrorist attacks, and Apple product unveilings presumably can change economic differentials pretty rapidly.