XOF has no cents — the bug that cost me 3 hours

When you work with European or American payment APIs, amounts get sent in cents.

€5 → you send 500. A €1.50 coffee → you send 150.

It's a convention to avoid floats in financial calculations.

The problem: I'd picked up that habit. And the first time I integrated Moneroo, I did the same thing.

5,000 FCFA → I sent 500000.

Result: the payment link displayed 500,000 FCFA. Not 5,000.

XOF — and several African currencies — have no subdivision into cents. 5,000 FCFA is 5,000. Not 50 FCFA. Not 500,000 FCFA. 5,000.

The currencies affected: XOF, XAF, GNF, CDF.

Since then, every Moneroo project of mine has this function:

const NO_SUBUNIT = ["XOF", "XAF", "GNF", "CDF"];
 
function toMonerooAmount(amount: number, currency: string): number {
  return NO_SUBUNIT.includes(currency) ? amount : Math.round(amount / 100);
}
 
function formatPrice(amount: number, currency = "XOF"): string {
  return new Intl.NumberFormat("fr-FR", {
    style: "currency",
    currency,
    minimumFractionDigits: 0,
  }).format(amount);
}
// formatPrice(5000, "XOF") → "5 000 FCFA"

If the currency is in NO_SUBUNIT, the amount you have stored is already correct. Nothing to divide.

Rule of thumb: XOF never divides.