The short version
Most of Settings → Checkout can stay near its defaults; the choices that cost you when made carelessly are required sign-in, extra required fields, preselected marketing consent, forced matching of billing and shipping addresses and automatic fulfillment.
Email is the default contact method on new stores, and requiring sign-in limits buyers to email and hides accelerated checkouts such as Apple Pay from the online store cart.
Order processing and customer account settings such as sign-in links sit on their own Settings screens; legacy customer accounts, deprecated since February 2026, remain only for stores already using them, with a final sunset date still to be announced.
Apps on the Information, Shipping and Payment steps, turning off basic address validation and different fields by country all need Shopify Plus.
Settings → Checkout decides what a buyer has to type before paying, which marketing boxes they see, and how much of the checkout you can change without Shopify Plus. Shopify documents these settings across several help pages; this guide walks them section by section and says what each choice changes for the buyer and for you.
What's on the Settings → Checkout Page
Key takeaway
The table lists the sections that the step-by-step instructions in Shopify's checkout section of the Help Center name, with the one consequence worth knowing before you touch each.
Settings → Checkout, section by section
| Section of the page | What it controls | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Customer contact method | Email only, or phone number or email; the option to require sign-in before checkout | Required sign-in removes accelerated checkouts from the online store cart |
| Customer information | Full name, company name, company VAT number where shown, address line 2 and the shipping phone, and how much of each buyers must fill in | Applies to the customer profile and shipping address, not billing; B2B checkouts ignore it |
| Marketing opt-in | Email and SMS consent checkboxes, preselected regions, WhatsApp regions, checkbox labels | Shopify's recommendations aren't legal advice; complying with local law is your responsibility |
| Tipping | Tip options at online checkout | Set up here even if your POS already takes tips |
| Advanced preferences › Address collection | Matching billing and shipping addresses, shipping address validation | Basic address checks can't be turned off unless the store is on Plus |
| Advanced preferences › Add-to-cart limit | A maximum quantity per item that buyers can add; active by default | Counts each variant on its own, not the product or the cart |
| Configurations | The checkout and accounts editor, and which version of the Thank you and Order status pages you run | Where you confirm the upgraded pages and duplicate a configuration |
| Checkout language | The text of each checkout field | Translations don't update themselves when you edit the default language |
Shopify Help Center pages on checkout form options, marketing consent, tipping, address collection, the add-to-cart limit, checkout configurations and checkout language, read October 15, 2026.
For a short tour of the page, Shopify Academy's two-minute video is the one Shopify embeds on its own checkout help page. It was published in August 2024, so a few screens may look different from your admin today.
Email or Phone: Contact Method and Required Sign-In
Key takeaway
Under Customer contact method you choose between Phone number or email and Email, and Email is selected by default on new stores. There is no option to require both an email address and a phone number as the contact method; if you need a phone number on every shipped order, use the shipping phone field covered under the phone question below.
The same section holds the option to require customers to sign in to their account before checkout. It is a strong switch, and Shopify spells out what it takes away:
If the option to require customers to sign in to their customer account before checking out is activated, then accelerated checkout options such as Apple Pay aren't displayed in the online store cart to prevent any checkouts from bypassing the sign-in requirement.
- Settings
- Checkout
Required sign-in also narrows the contact method: customers can only use an email address to check out while it is on. With the option off, guests can still pay without an account; guest checkout and when sign-in still comes up covers the cases around it.
Before you switch it on, weigh what the cart loses. If your buyers lean on one-tap wallets, compare what each of them does for you in Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Which Customer Fields to Require
Key takeaway
The Customer information section decides what buyers must enter. Its requirements apply only to the customer profile and the shipping address of the order, not to the billing address or billing contact details, and they don't apply to B2B checkouts. Every other form option is always required, including the Save this information for next time option.
- Settings
- Checkout
Customer information fields and what each choice does
| Field | Options | New-store default | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Only require last name · Require first and last name | Require first and last name | First and last name are two separate form fields |
| Company name | Don't include · Optional · Required | Check your store | A buyer who enters a company gets shipping options reserved for business addresses |
| Address line 2 | Don't include · Optional · Required | Check your store | Required or Don't include can stop some buyers from finishing, depending on their type of residence |
| Shipping address phone number | Don't include · Optional · Required | Optional: shown, never blocks checkout | Required is enforced only when the checkout has a shipping address step |
| Company VAT number | Don't include · Optional | Check your store | For eligible EU and UK cross-border sales; turn on VAT invoices with it |
Shopify Help Center, Editing the checkout form options, read October 15, 2026. The page names new-store defaults for full name and the shipping phone; for the other fields, check the setting in your own store.
The VAT number field matters only if you sell to businesses in other EU or UK countries, and not every store's Customer information section shows it; whether Shopify checks that number at checkout is covered in VAT number validation at Shopify checkout.
Apart from the address fields some countries add, these settings are the same for every country you sell to. To vary checkout fields by country, Shopify says you need an app that customizes the Information, Shipping and Payment pages, and those apps are available only on Shopify Plus.
Should You Make the Phone Number Required?
Key takeaway
Switch it to Required when your payment provider or shipping carrier needs a customer phone number, or when you want a phone number on every shipped order alongside the email contact method, since the contact method itself can't ask for both.
Required has a built-in limit. It applies to the shipping address form and is enforced only when the checkout includes a shipping address step, so an order with nothing to ship, such as a digital product, goes through without a phone number.
Marketing Opt-In: Email, SMS and WhatsApp Boxes
Key takeaway
The Marketing opt-in section shows a checkbox for email marketing at checkout, at sign-in, or both. Activating preselected email consent means the customer has to untick the box to opt out. Where the box starts ticked is set by region: Regions you choose is the mode Shopify turns on by default, and that mode starts with no regions selected; whether Shopify pre-checks the box walks through both region modes.
- Settings
- Checkout
The second mode, Regions recommended by Shopify, lets Shopify pick the regions. It does not move the legal decision off your desk:
These automatic recommendations don't constitute legal advice, and you're responsible for complying with your local laws and regulations.
The other consent boxes follow fixed rules:
- SMS can't be preselected. To keep SMS consent clear, the SMS marketing opt-in checkbox can never start ticked at checkout; it is also a separate setting from SMS order notifications.
- WhatsApp can replace SMS by region. With both SMS and WhatsApp opt-ins on, you choose which regions see each box; see showing WhatsApp instead of SMS.
- Labels are yours to edit. Shopify's help sends you to Customize labels for the default Checkout marketing text. In the admin we checked on October 16, 2026, that text sat in a field beside each channel's dropdown; changing the news and offers wording covers other languages.
If your store sends abandoned cart reminders, Shopify says to change the text next to the consent checkbox, because the default wording speaks of news and offers. Stores still on the older abandoned checkout email manage it in Settings → Checkout until Shopify removes it, and switching to the new automation in the Shopify Messaging app is permanent.
That one-way switch is a decision on its own; which of the two abandoned checkout generations you run explains what you gain and what you can't undo.
Address Collection: Autocomplete, Validation, Billing Match
Key takeaway
Address collection sits under Advanced preferences. By default, the customer's shipping address is used as the billing address, but the customer can enter a different billing address. Shopify recommends keeping it that way for most stores:
For most merchants, it's recommended to allow the shipping and billing address to be different during checkout.
- Settings
- Checkout
- Advanced preferences
- Address collection
Three more address settings, each with its own limit:
- Address autocomplete is available to all merchants and active by default in the countries Shopify lists for it. You turn it off in the checkout editor (Configurations › Edit › Settings › Address autocompletion), and only Plus stores can swap it for a third-party autocomplete app.
- Validate shipping address is available for shipping addresses in the countries Shopify lists for validation; orders from other countries still have their addresses inspected but might not get as many specific suggestions. Use either this setting or a third-party validation app, not both, to avoid lower checkout conversion.
- Basic validation, such as state or province and postal code matching, applies to all regions and can't be turned off unless the store is on Shopify Plus.
- Settings
- Checkout
- Configurations
- Edit
- Settings
Some countries add their own address fields. For Brazil, Kuwait, Panama, Peru and the Philippines, you can't change which additional fields appear or whether a field is required.
Tipping, Cart Limits and Checkout Language
Key takeaway
- Settings
- Checkout
- Settings
- Checkout
Tipping
Tipping options for the online store checkout must be set up in your Shopify admin, even if you already set up tipping for Shopify POS. Shopify warns that some offsite payment gateways might not recognize the tipping line item, so place a test order through yours before you rely on it, and remember that to include the tip in a refund you must add the tip amount by hand.
Add-to-Cart Limit
The add-to-cart limit is active by default and sets a maximum quantity per item, and it applies to each product's variants independently, not to the product or the cart as a whole. You can deactivate it or change the maximum value at any time; the recommended limit displays beneath the Limit field. Shopify's page lists the cases where the limit doesn't apply, such as carts with B2B quantity rules and products that continue selling when out of stock.
Checkout Language
Under Checkout language you can edit the text for each field on your checkout page. If your store is translated into other languages, update the translations yourself whenever you change the default language's text; how far Shopify's own translation app takes you is covered in Translate & Adapt limits.
Order Processing Lives in Settings → General
Key takeaway
The settings are in Settings → General → Order processing, the screen Shopify's order processing and archiving steps open.
- Settings
- General
Order processing: defaults and when to change them
| Setting | Default | Change it when |
|---|---|---|
| Require a confirmation step | Available by default only where the law requires it, including Japan and every country in Europe | Your store isn't in a country where the law requires it and you want it: contact Shopify Support |
| Fulfillment | Manual | You sell exclusively digital downloads or gift cards, or a fulfillment service handles all of your products |
| Automatic archiving | On: many orders with no processing left, such as paid and fulfilled or fully refunded, archive themselves | You want finished orders to stay in your open list: clear the checkbox |
Shopify Help Center, Set up order processing and archiving, read October 15, 2026.
Automatic fulfillment marks new orders as fulfilled, though it doesn't apply to in-store pickup orders. For a store that ships its own parcels, Shopify's advice is blunt:
If you package and ship products yourself, then don't turn on automatic fulfillment.
If you do turn it on, two details change how it behaves. With manual payment capture, you have to capture funds before an order can be fulfilled automatically. An optional checkbox, Automatically fulfill all orders, even those with a high risk of fraud, makes the setting disregard the order fraud analysis; whether Shopify holds high-risk orders explains what that checkbox does and does not do.
Post-purchase upsell apps also touch fulfillment: when an upsell offer is shown at checkout, the order's fulfillment status is set to On hold temporarily.
What Only Shopify Plus Changes at Checkout
Key takeaway
Shopify draws the line this way: standard checkout customizations are available on the Basic plan or higher, while advanced customization features are available only on Shopify Plus. The table collects what falls on each side, drawing on the checkout apps, Checkout Blocks and other help pages.
Checkout capabilities by plan
| Capability | Basic plan or higher | Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Standard checkout customizations in the checkout and accounts editor | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced checkout customization features | No | Yes |
| Checkout Branding API | No | Yes |
| Custom apps built with Shopify Functions | No | Yes |
| Apps on the Information, Shipping and Payment pages, including draft-order checkouts | No | Yes |
| Apps on the Thank you and Order status pages | Yes | Yes |
| Custom field block: your own checkbox or field in checkout | No | Yes |
| Checkout Blocks app | Content blocks on the Thank you and Order status pages | All features |
| Turning off state and postal code validation | No | Yes |
| Third-party address autocomplete app | No | Yes |
| Different checkout fields by country | No | Through an app that customizes the Information, Shipping and Payment pages |
| Bot protection | No | Yes, requested through Plus Support |
| Your own identity provider for customer accounts | No | Yes |
| Ship and pickup in one order | No | Feature test drive (Plus and Enterprise) |
Shopify Help Center pages on checkout configurations, checkout apps, Checkout Blocks, the custom field block, address collection, checkout form options, bot protection, customer accounts and ship and pickup, read October 15, 2026. The Starter plan is not covered here.
The most common reason merchants hit this line is a checkbox of their own at checkout. The custom field block that adds one is Plus-only; adding a custom checkbox to checkout covers the alternative below Plus.
Bot protection is requested through Plus Support, and ship and pickup in one order is offered only as a feature test drive on Plus and Enterprise.
Customer Accounts: New vs Legacy, and Where They're Set
Key takeaway
Settings → Customer accounts manages sign-in links, self-serve returns, store credit, the account URL, social sign-in, Sign in with Shop and an identity provider; connecting your own identity provider is available only on Shopify Plus. With the new customer accounts, the details stored in a customer's account are auto-filled at checkout once they sign in.
- Settings
- Customer accounts
The upgrade starts in your checkout settings, where you duplicate your configuration in the Configurations section of Settings → Checkout, and it ends with the Upgrade button in Settings → Customer accounts. Until you complete Step 9 of Shopify's upgrade guide, your online store and checkout still link to legacy accounts; what changed with the deprecation and what still works covers the rest of the move.
One visible symptom of the legacy version shows up after checkout: missing login links on the Order status page.
Thank You, Order Status and Recent Checkout Deadlines
Key takeaway
If you run a store on a non-Plus plan, the post-checkout pages already changed. To confirm whether you still use the deprecated versions, Shopify's upgrade guide sends you to Settings → Checkout and the Configurations section. The guide adds one trap: a store that is paused gets the upgrade permanently, and it stays in place after you unpause.
- Settings
- Checkout
The setting most stores feel is tracking. Additional scripts for tracking, analytics and page customizations aren't supported on the new pages, and after you replace them with pixels you might see fewer events arrive at the third-party platform. Script tags also stopped running on the Order status page for non-Plus stores on August 26, 2026.
Rebuilding that tracking is its own job: the analytics and pixels gap after additional scripts lays out what to rebuild and how.
If your Plus store relied on Shopify Scripts for discounts, shipping or payment rules, start with the Scripts to Functions migration path.
Checkout Settings Audit
Key takeaway
The checklist walks the sections of Settings → Checkout, steps out to Settings → General for order processing, then returns to Configurations and checks customer accounts. Steps one to five apply to every store. In step six, tipping and checkout text matter only if you use them, but every store should check the add-to-cart limit, because it is active by default.
Your progress is saved in this browser.
Leave a gap before the test order in the last step: Shopify says changes to settings such as customer information fields and marketing options can take up to 30 seconds to show on your checkout.
Shopify checkout settings auditTick each step off as you go through Settings → Checkout and the two screens next to it.
Shopify checkout settings audit
Tick each step off as you go through Settings → Checkout and the two screens next to it.
Pick Email or Phone number or email, and decide whether customers must sign in before checkout.
Before you tick this off
- Required sign-in is off, or I checked the cart without Apple Pay and accept that buyers can only use email
Set full name, company name and address line 2, and decide on the VAT number field if your Customer information section shows it.
Before you tick this off
- If address line 2 is Required or Don't include, I accept that some buyers may not be able to finish
- Company name is shown only if business-address shipping options should open for buyers who fill it in
- If I sell to eligible EU or UK businesses across borders, the VAT number field and VAT invoices are both on
Set the shipping phone to Required when your payment provider or shipping carrier needs a customer phone number; orders without a shipping step skip it.
Before you tick this off
- The shipping phone level matches what my payment provider or shipping carrier needs
Choose where the email checkbox shows, which regions get it preselected, and how the SMS and WhatsApp boxes appear.
Before you tick this off
- Every preselected region is a choice I can defend under my local laws
- If both SMS and WhatsApp opt-ins are on, I set which regions see each
- The checkbox labels match what I will send, including abandoned cart reminders
Let billing and shipping addresses differ unless fraud forces otherwise, and run one address validator, not two.
Before you tick this off
- Require matching addresses is off, or on because many of my orders are fraudulent
- I use either the shipping address validation setting or a validation app, not both
- Autocomplete is on in the countries on Shopify's list, or I turned it off in the checkout editor on purpose
Turn on tipping or edited field text only if you use them; the add-to-cart limit is on by default, so check that its maximum fits your largest normal order per variant, raise it, or turn it off; then test what you change.
Before you tick this off
- If tipping is on, I placed a test order through my offsite payment gateway
- Edited checkout text is updated in every translation
- The add-to-cart limit's maximum fits my largest normal order per variant, or I turned it off on purpose
Set the confirmation step, fulfillment and automatic archiving in Settings > General > Order processing.
Before you tick this off
- Fulfillment stays manual because I pack and ship myself, or is automatic because I sell only digital downloads or gift cards or a fulfillment service handles all my products
- If automatic fulfillment is on, I know whether the high-risk checkbox is ticked
- Automatic archiving stays on unless I want finished orders to stay in my open list
In Settings > Checkout > Configurations, confirm your Thank you and Order status pages are upgraded, and check which customer accounts version you run.
Before you tick this off
- Tracking that lived in additional scripts now runs as pixels
- If the store still uses legacy customer accounts, I have a plan for the upgrade
Give checkout setting changes up to 30 seconds, then run a test order through the whole checkout.
Before you tick this off
- The fields, consent boxes and accelerated checkout buttons I expect are there
- The order arrives with the fulfillment and archive behaviour I chose
The Bottom Line
Key takeaway
Most of the page can stay close to its defaults. The settings that cost you when set carelessly are the ones that take something away from the buyer or from you: required sign-in, extra required fields, preselected consent, matched addresses and automatic fulfillment.
Frequently Asked Questions
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