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Design multi-currency pricing end-to-end

Last updated: Apr 21, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates understanding of multi-currency pricing and payments, covering currency selection UX, storage versus presentation currency, exchange-rate sourcing and locking, rounding and localization, tax and fee modeling, caching and cross-channel consistency, and API and data-model design in a distributed marketplace.

  • hard
  • Airbnb
  • System Design
  • Software Engineer

Design multi-currency pricing end-to-end

Company: Airbnb

Role: Software Engineer

Category: System Design

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Onsite

How would you design frontend and backend to support multi-currency price display and booking? Cover currency selection UX, defaulting logic, storage currency vs presentation currency, when conversions are applied (quote time vs checkout), exchange-rate sources and refresh cadence, rounding and localization rules, tax/fee handling, caching strategy, and ensuring consistency across emails, invoices, and refunds. Provide API design and data model considerations.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates understanding of multi-currency pricing and payments, covering currency selection UX, storage versus presentation currency, exchange-rate sourcing and locking, rounding and localization, tax and fee modeling, caching and cross-channel consistency, and API and data-model design in a distributed marketplace.

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Airbnb logo
Airbnb
Aug 12, 2025, 12:00 AM
Software Engineer
Onsite
System Design
13
0

System Design: Multi-Currency Price Display and Booking

Context

You are building a global travel marketplace where guests discover listings, view prices, and complete bookings. Users come from many countries, want to pay in their preferred currency, and expect consistent amounts across web/app, emails, invoices, and refunds.

Design the frontend and backend to support multi-currency pricing and booking at scale.

Requirements

Cover the following:

  1. Currency selection UX and defaulting logic
  2. Storage currency vs. presentation currency
  3. When conversions are applied (search/quote vs. checkout), and rate locking
  4. Exchange-rate sources and refresh cadence; fallbacks
  5. Rounding and localization rules (minor units, cash rounding, formatting)
  6. Tax/fee handling (inclusive/exclusive, jurisdiction rules)
  7. Caching strategy across pages and services
  8. Consistency across emails, invoices, and refunds
  9. API design (endpoints, headers, responses) and data model considerations

State any assumptions you need to make.

Solution

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