Ondrej Holzman Czech customers have always bought in Apple's electronic stores, such as the App Store, Mac App Store or iTunes, in euros, as the Californian company uses this currency for all of Europe. However, the ice is beginning to be broken and in the Czech Republic we will soon be buying directly for crowns, starting with the iBookstore.
Apple announced to book publishers in Chile, Colombia, Peru, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic that they will change the price tags in the respective iBookstores to local currencies at the end of May. For European countries it is a transition from the euro, for South American countries from the dollar.
For Czech users, this will mean that they will see the same price in Czech crowns in the iBookstore and will not have to recalculate anything – the price will always be quoted from their card, regardless of the exchange rate. The announced currency can also serve as protection against possible exchange rate fluctuations.
For book publishers, the aforementioned news means the necessity of performing a one-time check as soon as Apple performs the automatic conversion from euros to Czech crowns according to the relevant price levels, which it also revealed. The cheapest book (not counting completely free) will be available in the Czech iBookstore for as little as 9 crowns, then always 10 crowns more expensive, i.e. for 19, 29, 39, 49... crowns. From 299 crowns there is a jump to 549 crowns, and the highest price tag can be up to XNUMX crowns.
It will not only benefit the end customer, but ultimately also the publishers, who will be able to better compare the prices of their books with the domestic market, where, of course, purchases are made in crowns. The customer can thus very easily find out, without the need for recalculation, where the book they are looking for is available at the cheapest price.
The change of currency from euros to Czech crowns in the Czech Republic so far only concerns the electronic book store, whereby Apple compares the step with, for example, the same store from Google, which already offers books for Czech crowns.
Whether or not we will see a similar change for applications in the App Store is not certain, however, at the end of last year, Apple announced just such a change in Egypt, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar, Tanzania and Vietnam, where everywhere to the local currency. It is therefore possible that something similar awaits European countries without the euro, including the Czech Republic.
I would much prefer if Apple introduced Apple Pay in our country, anyway, this probably won't hurt either.
... but it will be as long as the CNB kept a fixed exchange rate, so it was possible, if the exchange rate is relaxed and with the prospect of strengthening, I doubt that the prices in the APPStore would significantly copy the fluctuations of the exchange rate to the euro. Well, at least in our favor.
Pay depends on banking corporations, not Apple.