We thought it was a simple yes/no choice. It wasn’t.
· 1 min read
We thought it was a simple yes/no choice. It wasn’t.
We were planning a meetup event in Dubai for The eCom Show. Then came the question: should we charge in AED or INR?
Obvious answer - AED.
But then we hit a roadblock. We couldn’t set up a payment gateway in time to accept international payments. Only INR was possible.
Okay… but we definitely couldn’t show the ticket price in INR. Why? Because of something called anchoring - where you use a smaller, local number to set a psychological benchmark. For example, AED 99 feels a lot more natural than seeing ₹2300, even if it’s the same value. It sets the right expectation in the customer’s mind.
Another twist: we didn’t have a UAE bank account to receive payouts. Luckily, we found a workaround through an event management business - customers paid in AED, and we get payouts to our India bank account.
Startup life is 90% problem-solving and 10% celebration. This was one of those 90% moments. 😄