Like many merchants, you’ve chosen Shopify as your eCommerce platform because of its many built-in capabilities and integrations with dedicated eCommerce apps. As you fine-tune your Shopify account, you want to ensure excellent customer experiences by offering multiple payment options.
As you start exploring Shopify Payments, you can easily get overwhelmed by the amount of information available, but we’re here to help. Let’s see what Shopify Payments are, how you can set it up to get the most out of it, what payment methods you can enable, as well as what similar alternatives you have if your store isn’t eligible for Shopify Payments.
Let’s start by getting familiar with Shopify Payments.
What are Shopify Payments?
Shopify Payments is Shopify’s built-in payment gateway that allows you to accept multiple online payment methods as soon as you create your Shopify store. If Shopify Payments is available in your country and you decide to use it as your default payment service, you don’t need to set up a third-party payment provider or create a merchant account.
With Shopify Payments, you can accept all major payment methods, including debit and credit cards, digital wallets, and cryptocurrencies. The most popular payment methods available with Shopify Payments that your customers can use at checkout are:
- Visa
- MasterCard
- American Express
- Discover
- Shop Pay
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
You can use Shopify Payments as your payment processor if your store is located in one of the following countries and regions: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
When choosing one of the many payment providers available for Shopify stores, you should consider where your business is located and where your target audience lives. If Shopify Payment isn’t available or right for your online store, you must choose a third-party payment gateway. There are over 100 integrations available around the world to help you enable online payment processing.
Not all customers want to use credit cards to pay for their orders. In this situation,
you can set up manual payment methods, enabling payment options such as bank deposit, cash on delivery (COD), store credit, or gift card.
In the next section, we show you how to complete your account setup in the Shopify Payments section and highlight the information you need to activate Shopify Payments.
Ways to Set Up Shopify Payments
You are eligible to use Shopify Payments and are ready to set it up. Great!
As you’re doing research and learning to manage your store as well as possible, an important aspect to consider when setting up Shopify Payments is that only the Shopify store owner is allowed to change the payment provider.
You should also know that you must set up the Shopify Payments account within 21 days of your first sale. Otherwise, all payments are automatically refunded to your customers.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to completing your Shopify Payment account setup based on the information provided in Shopify Help Center:
Step 1: Choose your store currency
You must select the store currency before making the first sale. In your merchant account, go into Shopify admin at Settings > Store Currency > Select your currency, then click “Save.” If you want to change your store currency, you have to contact Shopify Support.
Step 2: Activate Shopify Payments
To activate Shopify Payments, you need to go to Shopify admin > Settings > Payments.
If you haven’t set up a credit card payment provider, go to Shopify Payments and click on Complete account setup.
If you have already enabled a different credit card payment provider, go to Shopify Payments and click on Activate Shopify Payments.
Step 3: Enter your store and banking information.
The information you must provide at this step is:
- Your Employer Identification Number (EIN)
- Your banking information
The purpose of the information requested for Shopify Payments is to comply with regulations in your country. Correct and complete business details help reduce verification issues from Shopify’s banking partners.
After you add the requested information for Shopify Payment set up, click Save.
That’s it.
Discover more about setting up Shopify Payments in this video tutorial Shopify:
It can take up to three business days for Shopify to review your Shopify Payments account.
Shopify recommends securing your account with two-step authentication to prevent your store and financial information from potential criminal attacks.
Costs of using Shopify Payments
Now, let’s talk a little about costs, one of the most important criteria when choosing a payment processor.
Before activating Shopify Payments, you should know that the costs vary based on your Shopify subscription plan. If you want to lower your credit card rates, you must upgrade your subscription.
You stop paying subscription transaction fees when you use Shopify Payments as your payment processor. Using Shopify Payments doesn’t involve paying monthly Shopify fees or any other hidden fees.
Besides credit card fees, the fees you should take into account are the processing fees applied when selling products in multiple currencies.
Getting paid when using Shopify Payments
We’re sure you want to know how much it takes to get paid when using Shopify Payments.
The pay period is defined as the time between when a customer’s payment is captured and when funds are sent to your bank account. It varies depending on the country where your store is based.
Banks typically take one to three business days to process deposits to your bank account.
Now that we’ve shown you how to set up Shopify Payments, let’s look at several payment methods available in Shopify, accelerated checkouts, and third-party payment gateways you can use when Shopify Payments isn’t available for your store.
What are the Payment Methods in Shopify?
If you already use several providers to improve customer experiences by offering multiple carrier options or easy returns, you also need to enable multiple payment methods.
As we emphasized in the previous sections, Shopify store owners can use Shopify Payments or a third-party payment gateway to enable credit card payments and other online payment methods.
For those customers who don’t want to use credit cards to pay, you can enable other payment options, such as bank deposit, cash on delivery (COD), store credit, or gift card. Your customers can also choose online payments without using credit cards by paying with PayPal, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, and Apple Pay.
If you want to enable accelerated checkout, you can use Shop Pay, which allows customers to save their shipping and payment information. Fast checkout is also available with other payment providers that offer accelerated checkout buttons, including Paypal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
Are you considering accepting payments with cryptocurrency? This payment method is also available with Shopify Payments.
Let’s explore some of the payment methods available in Shopify, see how accelerated checkout works and what third-party providers you can use to enable credit card transactions for all your target audience.
Debit Card vs. Credit Card
Online purchases are faster and more secure thanks to payment providers and payment gateways available for Shopify shops. Having debit and credit card processing capabilities for online payments helps eCommerce businesses increase conversions and average order values.
Shopify merchants in the US can accept credit and debit cards from payment networks such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, Elo, or JCB.
Both debit card and credit card payments represent a convenient way for your customers to purchase online, but there are some differences you should know as a merchant.
You pay less for debit card transactions as most banks charge a 0.005% plus 21¢ rate per transaction. You would probably have an additional fee charged by your payment processor, but the total amount paid is lower than for credit card transactions. But the good thing about accepting credit card transactions is that customers tend to spend more using this payment method, leading to higher AOV.
Now, let’s look at accelerated checkout alternatives and each method’s advantages.
Amazon Pay
With over 300 million active Amazon customer accounts, Amazon Pay is one of the most popular payment methods and accelerated checkout options used by over 1 million websites worldwide.
Adding Amazon Pay as an accelerated checkout option allows customers to use a fast, easy, and trusted payment method. Once you activate Amazon Pay for your store, customers can use the payment and shipping information stored in their Amazon account.
Amazon Pay is a popular payment method that reduces friction and cart abandonment, helping customers buy from your store even when they don’t have a bank card on hand or simply want to proceed to checkout faster without manually entering their information.
Google Pay
Google Pay is one of the world’s most popular digital wallets and online payment systems. It has over 150 million monthly users in 42 markets and is used by around 800.000 websites as a quick and secure payment gateway.
Google Pay can be used for accelerated checkout by customers with the Google Pay app installed. If you enable this option for your store, customers can use any payment method they saved in their Google Account.
The security protocols, encryption, and tokenization make Google Pay one of the safest payment methods, keeping customer data safe from fraud and cyber attacks. Having Google Pay as a fast payment method makes customers trust your brand and increases sales across all devices.
Apple Pay
Online payments via Apple Pay represent 6.21% of the total online payments, with 507 million users worldwide and over 200,000 websites accepting Apple Pay in the US alone.
Apple Pay is an accelerated checkout process for customers that use a device that supports Apple Pay or a supported Safari browser. Customers that choose this method can use the shipping and billing information they added to their digital wallet. Customers have to authenticate and confirm the purchases and the process varies depending on the Apple device they use.
Your store can accept Apple pay without paying extra fees. Adding the “Buy With Apple Pay” button enables simplified checkout experiences, allowing customers to purchase safely from your store using a method they trust. The checkout is fast, and customers authorize orders using fingerprint or face identification.
PayPal
PayPal is available in over 200 countries and regions, allowing businesses to process online and in-person payments. Many Shopify stores use it because it is one of the platform’s default payment providers, and a PayPal Express Checkout account is created as soon as the store is opened.
After you set up your PayPal account, PayPal Express allows you to add a one-click accelerated checkout button and let customers purchase using their PayPal account. It’s a fast and secure online payment solution to increase conversions and convenience.
PayPal can also be used as a third-party payment provider if your store is not eligible for Shopify Payments. Other two popular payment processing alternatives among Shopify merchants are Authorize.net and Stripe.
Authorize.net
Authorize.Net is an alternative to Shopify Payments if your store is located in Europe, Australia, Canada, the UK, or the US. It’s a great solution if you’re looking for a payment provider to support online, mobile, and in-person purchases.
The purchase methods you can enable using Authorize.Net are credit cards, e-check payments, and digital payment services such as PayPal, Apple Pay, or Visa Checkout. Merchants appreciate this provider for its advanced fraud detection features, easy management of customer information, and e-checks and recurring payment capabilities.
Stripe
Stripe is one of the top payment gateways you can use as an alternative to Shopify Payments. It is available in 47 countries, supports over 135 currencies, and is very popular among larger stores that want to enable multiple payment options, testing capabilities, and need a flexible solution.
Stripe is well-known for its customizable checkout flows and detailed documentation available for developers. If you want to create custom checkout flows and have a development team ready to help you with this process, Stripe is one of the best payment services you can find and easily integrate with your Shopify Store.
When you’re not eligible for Shopify Payments, you have to carefully analyze other alternatives, comparing benefits, pros and cons, and pricing to ensure you choose the best option for your current needs and future developments of your eCommerce business.
Get started with the best Shopify payment provider
In this blog article, we’ve shown you what Shopify Payments are, how to set up your Shopify Payment account, and how to enable multiple payment methods. We also presented two possible alternatives to Shopify’s built-in payment gateway.
To help you make an informed decision, we invite you to learn more about the Top 10 Best Payment Methods for Shopify merchants and discover each payment gateway’s benefits.