Shopify Car Dealership: Deposits, Listings and FTC Rules

A car is the most expensive thing most Shopify stores will ever list, and it breaks two habits of ordinary ecommerce: each listing is one physical vehicle, and the price is large enough that where the money changes hands becomes the main design decision. Shopify covers the storefront side — listings, filters, deposits and invoices — while the parts a dealership is licensed for stay with you and your state.

This guide is written for a US dealership, new or used, deciding whether its website can run on Shopify. It covers the two payment layers that decide whether you can take money for a car at all, what card fees cost on a vehicle price, the four ways to sell through the site, how to list one car as one product, and the federal and state rules a dealer site has to carry.

Can You Sell Cars on Shopify?

Selling a car through Shopify passes two separate layers, and they answer different questions. The first is Shopify's own: its Shopify Payments eligibility page groups prohibited businesses into six high-level categories — regulated or illegal products, financial products, adult products, pseudo-pharmaceuticals, gambling and counterfeit goods — and, as read on September 26, 2026, vehicles are not one of them.

The second layer is the payment processors behind Shopify Payments in your country, and that is where vehicles do appear. Adyen's list of restricted and prohibited businesses carries the line "Car and truck rental / sales / importers / car parts", marked R for merchants — restricted rather than prohibited — and Adyen is one of the processors in 31 of the 40 Shopify Payments countries. The United States is not one of those 31.

For a US dealership, none of Shopify's own layers — the Acceptable Use Policy, the Shopify Payments terms, the eligibility page or Shopify's list of processors by country — names vehicles. A dealership elsewhere checks its processors before building anything; what a restriction means in practice, and which processor serves which country, is set out in our answer on which Shopify Payments processors restrict vehicle sales.

What Do Card Fees Cost on a Car?

Card fees are a percentage, and on a vehicle price a percentage gets large. Shopify publishes its online rates per plan on its pricing page: 2.9% + 30¢ per online card payment on Basic, falling to 2.25% + 30¢ on Plus, with a higher rate for premium cards — Shopify Payments rates in the US, in USD, as of September 2026.

Take a $24,000 car as the worked example — our own illustrative price, not a market figure. Paid in full online by card on Basic, it costs $696.30 in fees (2.9% of $24,000 plus 30¢). The same payment on a premium card costs $840.30. A $750 deposit on that car costs $22.05 on Basic.

The deposit figure is not a saving by itself. The rate applies to whatever amount runs through Shopify Payments, so a balance charged later through the same checkout carries the same percentage. The fee shrinks only when the balance is paid some other way at the dealership — which is the whole point of the deposit model below.

Four Ways to Sell a Car Through the Site

Most of this decision is about where the money changes hands. The table puts the four models side by side; the sections under it show how each one is set up and where it stops.

Taking a deposit with a pre-order app

The deposit route runs on Shopify's pre-order purchase option. It is not a switch in the admin: Shopify's help page says that to use pre-orders you need to install a pre-order app from the Shopify App Store. What the app adds is a payment choice at checkout, which Shopify describes like this:

For a dealership that choice is the deposit: the buyer pays part of the price to hold the car, and the balance follows later. How and when that balance is collected is set by the app you choose, so read that part of its listing before you install; our pre-orders guide explains how a deposit and the later balance charge work. Shopify and the app take the payment; when a deposit is refundable is a term you write and publish before the buyer pays.

One caution applies to cars specifically. Shopify frames pre-orders around products that are out of stock or not yet available, while a car on your lot is in stock with a quantity of one. No Shopify page we have found restricts a pre-order or deposit on an in-stock product, but Shopify's own deposit example combines two different products in one cart rather than a single unit, so test a deposit on one real listing before you rely on it (the search behind that sentence is listed at the end of this section).

Billing a buyer with a draft order

When a deal is agreed before any checkout — on the phone, by email or on the lot — the tool is a draft order, which Shopify describes in one sentence:

By default the invoice contains a link to a checkout where the buyer pays, so the agreed deal arrives as an ordinary order in your admin. Payment does not have to be due at once: draft orders take payment terms — due on receipt, on fulfillment, on net terms of 7 to 90 days or on a fixed date — so an invoice can fall due when the car is handed over. Our draft-orders guide covers how paying later on terms works.

Shopify Academy's official walkthrough, published in 2022, shows the draft-order screen itself — creating the order, adding products and setting it up for the customer:

A deposit on a draft order is where the plan matters. Shopify documents a percentage-based deposit requirement on a draft order's payment terms as an option available only on the Shopify Plus plan, and Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a 3-year term, so it rarely makes sense to change plans for that field alone. On other plans, the deposit comes from a pre-order app at checkout; our partial-payments guide explains how deposits on draft orders work on Plus.

Listings and an enquiry form only

The simplest dealer site takes no money at all. Each car has its listing with photos and details, and the call to action is a question or a test-drive request; price, inspection, financing and paperwork all happen at the dealership, and no card fee touches the vehicle price.

Test drives need a calendar, which is what booking apps sell. The two we read on September 27, 2026 both name car rental among their uses — Cowlendar lists "Boat rental, car rental, etc." and Appointo the same — but neither listing mentions test drives, so try the appointment flow in a trial before you commit.

If you also rent cars out, that is a different business with its own answer: running a car or boat rental business on Shopify.

Taking the full price at checkout

The last model treats a car like any other product: the buyer pays everything at checkout. It is the simplest to set up and the most expensive per sale — the worked example above puts the fee at $696.30 on Basic for the $24,000 car.

Shop Pay Installments is the pay-over-time option inside Shopify's checkout, and it has a ceiling: $35 to $30,000 USD in the United States, including discounts, shipping, and taxes, on stores that meet its eligibility requirements, have Shopify Payments and Shop Pay activated, and have a US business entity selling in USD. The $24,000 car fits only if taxes and delivery keep the total under $30,000. Our BNPL comparison sets out who qualifies for Shop Pay Installments and on what amounts.

For an ordinary card payment we found no published ceiling: the Shopify Payments pages we read on September 27, 2026 name no maximum transaction amount. That is an absence, not a promise that a vehicle-sized payment goes through, so confirm with Shopify Payments support before you advertise full online payment.

Listing Vehicles: One Product per Car

A dealership catalogue is unusual in one way: almost every product is unique. Two cars of the same model differ in mileage, colour, history and VIN, so the clean model is one product per vehicle with a quantity of one. The rest of the store — domain, checkout, policies — is built the same way as any other Shopify store.

What one vehicle listing holds

Put the details a buyer compares into product metafields rather than the description, one field each:

• VIN — the identity of the exact car on the listing.
• Mileage — on a used car, often what separates two otherwise similar listings.
• Year, make and model — the fields you will turn into filters.
• Trim or condition — whatever else your lot uses to tell two similar cars apart.

One vehicle needs photos from many angles, and often a video walk-around. The media limits of a single product are their own question, answered in how many media files one Shopify product can hold.

Filters buyers expect: make, model, year

On a lot with more than a handful of cars, filters are how a buyer narrows the list. Shopify's Search & Discovery app builds storefront filters, and its filter documentation states that "Product metafield filters are based on product metafields that are assigned to all products in the store." In practice, fill the same vehicle fields on every listing.

Whether a given metafield qualifies, and when filters stop showing, has more rules than fit here; our metafields guide answers whether shoppers can filter your catalogue by a metafield. The walkthrough below, from a third-party tutorial channel, covers setting up filters in the app:

Is there a Shopify theme for car dealers?

Inside the Theme Store, Meka presents itself "For Auto, Cars, Auto Parts, Car Parts, Mobile Automotive, Tools, Car" and offers rich metafields "perfect for Auto Parts, Car Parts, Car Service", while Krank's Drive preset is "Built for Automotive" and "Perfect for auto parts, accessories, and performance shops". If parts are what you sell, our guide to a Shopify auto parts store covers adding a year/make/model search to a parts catalog.

Neither is described as a theme for vehicle inventory, and that matters less than it sounds: what a car listing needs from a theme is a large photo gallery and a filter sidebar, which are layout questions. Start the comparison from Horizon, Shopify's current flagship theme, and pay for a theme only if its demo shows a filtered, photo-heavy collection page.

The Rules a US Dealer Site Has to Carry

Shopify runs the store; the law of selling cars sits with you. Three rules shape what a US dealer site shows and does — a federal rule that reaches online sales, a license set by your state, and a federal rule that no longer applies. This is orientation, not legal advice.

The FTC Used Car Rule and the Buyers Guide

The federal rule that reaches a dealer website is the FTC's Used Car Rule, and the FTC's own dealer guide sets out who it covers:

The online question is answered on the FTC's consumer page for used-car buyers: "You're also entitled to a Buyer's Guide if you buy a used car online." So a site that sells used cars — by deposit, invoice or full checkout — needs a way to give each online buyer that guide. The dealer guide quoted above sets out what the Buyers Guide contains and how it is provided; read it before your first online sale.

State dealer licensing

Whether you need a dealer license is a state question, and states draw the line differently. Texas is one example: Transportation Code §503.024, as published on texas.public.law, exempts a person who "sells or offers to sell during a calendar year fewer than five vehicles of the same type that are owned and registered in that person's name". Section 503.021 of the same code says a person may not engage in business as a dealer without a dealer general distinguishing number, and §503.024 lists other exclusions besides this one.

The California DMV's vehicle dealer license pages, read on September 27, 2026, name no comparable number of cars per year — no page we have found there sets one — so do not carry the Texas figure across state lines. Your state's DMV or motor vehicle board is the place to check before the site takes its first payment.

The FTC CARS Rule no longer applies

Older dealer guides still describe the FTC's Combating Auto Retail Scams (CARS) Rule. It is gone: the Fifth Circuit vacated it on January 27, 2025, and the FTC's withdrawal of the rule took effect on February 12, 2026. The Used Car Rule above is a separate rule and remains in force.

Sales Tax, Registration and Handover

Two things happen after the deal that ordinary ecommerce never meets: the car has to be registered, and it has to leave the lot.

Sales tax and registration fees

Tax on a vehicle can be tied to its registration in a way other products are not. California's tax agency explains it for buyers who did not pay sales tax to a California dealer:

That is one state's rule, and states differ, so check yours rather than generalising from California. On the Shopify side, the tax pages we read on September 27, 2026 — the Taxes overview and the page on tax on shipping — don't mention registration, DMV or title fees, so do not expect Shopify Tax to calculate them. Agree with your accountant how the site charges tax on a deposit before the first one arrives.

Pickup at the lot or delivery

If the buyer collects the car at the lot, Shopify's pickup in store option, per its help page as read on September 26, 2026, adds a pickup choice at checkout for a location you set up for it — a natural fit for a deposit order, where the buyer is coming in for the handover anyway.

If you deliver cars, keep their rate apart from everything else you sell. Shopify describes shipping profiles as the way to set different shipping rates for different products, so vehicles get their own profile and rate while accessories ship at ordinary parcel rates. Stores already upgraded to shipping options by market, which Shopify is rolling out gradually, set a rate for a vehicles collection instead.

What It Costs to Open the Store

Nothing about cars changes the platform price. The store runs on a normal plan — $39 a month on Basic billed monthly, or $29 a month billed yearly, in USD as of September 2026 — and the build itself, from domain to checkout, follows the same steps as any Shopify store website.

The variable costs are the apps and the theme. A pre-order app for deposits, a booking app for test drives and a paid theme each carry their own price on their App Store or Theme Store listing, so read the tier that holds the feature you need. Plus, from $2,300 a month on a 3-year term, is a separate decision: it adds deposits on draft orders, which a pre-order app handles without it.

Your Dealer-Site Launch Checklist

The order matters more than usual here. Steps one and two can end the project, so they come before any design work, and step six exists because a deposit on a single in-stock car is a part of the setup that no Shopify page we read shows directly.

The Bottom Line

The platform question is mostly settled by two checks outside Shopify — your processors and your state — and one choice inside it: how much of the price moves through the checkout. Everything else is ordinary store work.

Frequently Asked Questions