Law, Finance and eCommerce sites.

dsf

Anyone want to weigh in on this question? What do you do on an eCommerce site when you end up dealing with currency values that go past the hundredths mark. The client definitely wouldn't want to take any loss, even if it is that small as those points can add up over time and the clients customers would rather keep those values as well. I'm sure there has to be some sort of legal framework or policy to govern this, but I don't even know how to start looking for it. Googling "eCommerce hundredths of a cent", or "micro financial transactions" and others, have turned up nothing but exploitative mortgage sites(web SCUM). Any thoughts?

Lol I'm about to fire off an email to the US Treasury.

Andrew

Superman 4

dsf

Superman 4

no

Nice try at trolling but superman 4 would be truncating the result and diverting the hundredth or smaller to myself, this is called salami slicing. The issue at hand is that if you round or truncate the value, which you would have to do at some point in the event of an irrational decimal, one party loses a penny. So what does the law say about that?

zehaeva

I guess you could do it, I don't think that it's a standard option however. I do seem to recall ubercart or magento allowing you to go down that far on the admin side, but for a customer facing option, I'm not sure.

Anthony Heman

What is the specific situation you are dealing with? I've had to deal with some financial systems and rounding (and learned how fucked up some companies and/or software do it), but on a final customer/client basis everything was whole pennies.

Apreche

I do know that Amazon deals with this problem. Many of the AWS services are charged in very small fractions of a cent. So maybe if you use Amazon payment platform the problems will be solved?

Nuri

I don't understand why it is necessary to use any denomination of currency lower than a penny in internal US transactions. Anyway, in the case of a fractional transaction you should always round up. If your bill is 2.5 cents and the minimum denomination of currency in your nation is 1 cent, then you need 3 cents to cover your bill. Why the bill wasn't simply 3 cents in the first place is beyond me, since that is what is required to pay it.

Jason

Also, Superman 4 was the Quest for Peace. You mean Superman 3.

Duh.

dsf

I don't understand why it is necessary to use any denomination of currency lower than a penny in internal US transactions. Anyway, in the case of a fractional transaction you should always round up. If your bill is 2.5 cents and the minimum denomination of currency in your nation is 1 cent, then you need 3 cents to cover your bill. Why the bill wasn't simply 3 cents in the first place is beyond me, since that is what is required to pay it.

It's basically a,"My boss was hired to do something and I was handed the problem" issue. I have a set of constraints that I have to operate in and I have to find a solution that doesn't screw my boss's client. Either way, I need to be aware of any possible regulations I could be liable for breaking for whatever solution I come up with.

and "Screw" could mean make them lose potential income or send them to jail.

Rym

I don't understand why it is necessary to use any denomination of currency lower than a penny in internal US transactions.

There are tons of places where this matters. One obvious example is the stock market or a bank. If you round sub-penny-interest down to zero pennies, you eliminate a surprising portion of interest. If you round it up, series of transactions will compound the error into a noticeable discrepancy.

Another example is commission rates on various small transactions in aggregate. You can't just sum the total set of transactions at the end and then round to the nearest penny, as you need to have the information be accurate in realtime regardless of how many transactions occur between the creator and consumer of the transaction.

I could go on, but suffice it to say, arbitrary-precision financial transactions are necessary in the modern world.

Nuri

I don't understand why it is necessary to use any denomination of currency lower than a penny in internal US transactions.

There are tons of places where this matters. One obvious example is the stock market or a bank. If you round sub-penny-interest down to zero pennies, you eliminate a surprising portion of interest. If you round it up, series of transactions will compound the error into a noticeable discrepancy.

Another example is commission rates on various small transactions in aggregate. You can't just sum the total set of transactions at the end and then round to the nearest penny, as you need to have the information be accurate in realtime regardless of how many transactions occur between the creator and consumer of the transaction.

I could go on, but suffice it to say, arbitrary-precision financial transactions are necessary in the modern world.

Rym, I know how it IS done. I'm saying I see no legitimate reason it couldn't be done another way AS A SYSTEM. Obviously in the current market, one company can't just decide they want to use only whole cent values.

Also, Bruce, talking to an accountant or a financial lawyer is a way better method to figure out your solution than Google. Unfortunately, laws and regulations are complicated and vary depending on your location, so you can't rely on what you find online.

Rym

Rym, I know how it IS done. I'm saying I see no legitimate reason it couldn't be done another way AS A SYSTEM

Then certain things break down. Entire concepts like percentages fail without arbitrary precision if done en masse.

So you are technically correct: we could reform the whole system. But such reform would mean reforming such core concepts as percent and division.

Nuri

But such reform would mean reforming such core concepts as percent and division.

I am a fan of this plan. I actually kind of hate our financial system. It is impossible to actually perform many of the financial tasks that we do on computers with real money. This leads to all kinds of problems when trying to figure out the real-life sum of actual currency. Why have two irreconcilable systems of monetary exchange? They should interface smoothly or not at all.

In our current system, an arbitrary line must be drawn somewhere anyway. Why not draw it at the cent instead of the millionth-of-a-cent? It's completely arbitrary any way you do it. At least make it logistically easier for everyone.

Rym

I am a fan of this plan. I actually kind of hate our financial system. It is impossible to actually perform many of the financial tasks that we do on computers with real money

I'd rather "real" money go away. I'd be very happy if cash didn't exist. Cash is the problem, not arbitrary-precision currency.