It’s possible to obtain steep discounts on the price of Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, if you’re willing to write a check in a currency that isn’t U.S. dollars.

A new report in The Register says that Microsoft is offering “unintentional discounts” to Azure users who pre-pay for a minimum of one year’s services. That’s because Microsoft has a policy of discounting user’s bills by five percent once they spend a certain amount of cash on Azure services, but that exact amount depends on what currency one is using. For those paying in U.S. dollars, the threshold is a nice, round $6,000.

However, due to the constant shifts in other currencies versus the U.S. dollar, the threshold is considerably lower in a number of countries.

For example, when the sums are done British pounds, the discount threshold is just £3,670, which translates to just $5,631 according to XE.com. What that means is British-based Azure customers can obtain a discount much sooner and therefore more frequently than American firms who pay in U.S. dollars.

The Register produced a chart detailing the discount thresholds for various other major currencies, which shows that Azure customers residing in Australia, Canada, the EU, and India can all enjoy significantly greater discounts than their U.S. counterparts. It’s not all bad news for Americans though, who can take comfort from the knowledge that their discounts kick in considerably sooner than customers in South Korea, and especially those in Brazil, who need to splurge $288 more on Azure services to obtain that discount.

The only conclusion to be made is that companies looking to cut back on their IT spend would do well to shop around before they buy. And if possible, they should work out a way to obtain a credit card in the UK, or another country that has a significantly lower threshold.

Of course, The Register points out that customers need to be careful because any un-used Azure credit is non-refundable. So don’t go buying more than you’ll need.

For those customers based in countries not mentioned here, Microsoft has a page listing the thresholds for each country it serves.

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