Recovery playbook
Recovering transfers across currencies
The transfer sent $90 out as €82 in March. The reversal happens in June. You reverse €82, it converts back at June’s rate, and the difference between what left and what returned is nobody’s error and everybody’s problem. Cross-border recovery adds a second conversion to every correction, a policy question about whose currency defines "whole", and a bookkeeping obligation most teams discover during their first month-end after one.
Two conversions, two spreads
Every crossing carries spread: outbound on the original transfer, inbound on the reversal. Modelled round trip — $100 out at rate X minus spread, €-equivalent reversed weeks later at rate Y minus spread again — typically shows a total drag of one to two percent even when every step executed perfectly. Label it conversion cost, book it separately, and stop letting it masquerade as reconciliation error.
Policy: face value or dollar-equivalent
Reversals are specified in the transfer’s currency, so someone must decide what "made whole" means. Recovering face value (€82) is seller-neutral: the seller returns what they received. Recovering dollar-equivalence chases June’s dollar value of March’s dollars — platform-neutral, seller-hostile, and a terms question rather than an API one. Choose once, document it in seller terms, apply it identically thereafter.
Record the delta as its own line
Book FX deltas separately, never silently inside the recovery amount. The alternative is month-end reconciliation reopening the finding as an unexplained mismatch — the third-most-common ledger mystery in our field-guide taxonomy, right after double-booked fees and timing differences.
When recovery costs more than it returns
Spread plus operational cost versus owed amount is a threshold decision like any other. On small cross-border findings the round-trip cost can approach the recovery itself — the honest answer is sometimes "write it off and fix the flag", and saying so builds more credibility than chasing €4 across two currencies.
What FeeGuard does about it
Detector math handles zero-decimal and multi-currency currencies explicitly, findings quote figures in the transfer’s own currency, and FX findings themselves are monitoring-only and labelled unrecoverable — because pretending otherwise would be the first dishonest thing on this page.
Common questions
Does Stripe guarantee the original rate on reversal?
No. Conversions execute at the rate in effect when the reversal crosses, which is why the delta exists at all.
Can we specify reversals in our platform currency instead?
No — reversal amounts are denominated in the transfer’s currency. Currency choice happens in policy, not in the API call.
Is the FX delta itself recoverable from anyone?
No. It is spread — negotiable going forward with volume data, irrecoverable retroactively.