Shopify Payment Gateways: Fees, Countries & How to Pick

Every Shopify sale runs through a payment gateway — the piece that takes your customer's card and turns it into money in your bank. Shopify ships with its own gateway, Shopify Payments, but you can also plug in outside providers. The catch is a surcharge that most merchants only discover on their bill. This guide covers the fees by plan, how the leading gateways compare, and how to pick the right one for your country and business.

What a Payment Gateway Is

Start with the vocabulary, because “gateway,” “processor,” and “Shopify Payments” get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. Shopify's own definition is the clearest place to begin:

“A payment gateway is a mechanism that communicates transaction information between the customer and the merchant.”

Source: Shopify — Payment Gateways

In practice, three roles sit behind every checkout. The gateway captures and passes the card data, the processor settles the money, and — on Shopify — Shopify Payments can play both roles at once so you never wire up a separate provider.

Here is what happens in the couple of seconds after a shopper hits “Pay now.” The flow is the same whether you use Shopify Payments or a third-party gateway — only who runs each step changes.

The Default: Shopify Payments

For most merchants, the honest answer to “which gateway?” is the one already built in. Shopify Payments is activated from your admin with no separate contract, and crucially it is the only option that carries no third-party transaction fee. You pay the card-processing rate for your plan and nothing extra to Shopify. This article focuses on choosing between gateways and the surcharge math; for the mechanics of setup, eligibility, and payouts, see our dedicated guide to Shopify Payments.

Source: Shopify pricing (verified July 2026). Online (card-not-present) rates; in-person rates differ.

The other reason Shopify Payments is the default is Shop Pay, its accelerated checkout. Shopify reports as much as 50% better conversion compared to guest checkout for Shop Pay, and merchants feel the speed difference at the point of sale.

Availability is the one real limit. Shopify Payments works only if your business is located in a supported country, and it covers dozens of them — Shopify keeps the current, complete list on its supported countries page. If your country isn't on it, a third-party gateway isn't a downgrade — it's simply how you accept cards, and the rest of this guide is written for you as much as for anyone.

The Third-Party Surcharge

This is the number that surprises merchants. When you accept payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a third-party transaction fee on those orders — a percentage that depends entirely on your plan. It sits on top of whatever the gateway itself charges to process the card, so you are effectively paying two fees on the same sale.

Surcharge percentages from Shopify's published pricing (verified July 2026); dollar column shown on $10,000 of monthly card volume. The Grow row is our canonical example.

Shopify is upfront about why the fee exists, and it's worth understanding rather than resenting: the surcharge pays for the checkout platform and the integration work that lets an outside gateway plug into your store at all.

When the surcharge is waived

The fee is not universal. Shopify waives it for four kinds of orders, which is why keeping Shopify Payments active alongside other methods matters:

• Shopify Payments — any order processed through it.
• Shop Pay — the accelerated checkout counts as Shopify Payments.
• PayPal Express Checkout — the version auto-added to new stores.
• Manual methods — cash on delivery, bank transfers, and similar.

A worked example

Make it concrete. Take a store on the Grow plan doing $10,000 a month in card sales through a third-party gateway, with a $50 average order. Grow's surcharge is 1%, so Shopify adds $100 a month — purely for using an outside provider, before the gateway's own processing fees. That is the number we'll carry through the calculator and the chart below. The same $10,000 costs $200 on Basic and just $20 on Plus, which is why high-volume stores that need a third-party gateway often justify a higher plan.

Source: Shopify third-party transaction fees by plan (verified July 2026), applied to $10,000 of monthly volume.

The mixed-provider premium

There is a subtler cost if you run a third-party gateway and Shopify Payments together. In that mixed setup, Shopify Payments transactions — including Shop Pay and local payment methods — are charged at standard rates plus a 1.25% premium. In other words, adding an outside gateway can quietly raise the cost of the Shopify Payments orders you were already taking. One exception runs the other way: stores on the Shopify Plus plan that use Shopify Payments as their sole provider have their third-party transaction fees waived entirely.

Gateway Comparison Matrix

If Shopify Payments isn't the answer, you have plenty of company: Shopify supports a large catalog of outside providers. The six below are among the most commonly shortlisted. Every rate is observed from each provider's own pricing page and shown in that provider's currency — headline rates drift and several vendors quote only custom pricing, so treat this as a starting map, not a contract.

Rates observed on each provider's official pricing page, July 2026 (mixed currencies). Remember to add Shopify's third-party surcharge on top of these figures.

Which Gateway Setup Fits You?

You now know the default, the surcharge, and the field of providers. Still weighing it up? Answer five quick questions for a personalized read — Shopify Payments, Shopify Payments plus a method or two, or a dedicated third-party gateway. The first question is the gate that decides everything else.

Want Shopify's own walkthrough on choosing a provider? This official video covers the same ground in a bit more depth.

Calculate Your Surcharge

Numbers beat intuition here. The calculator starts pre-filled on the canonical example — a Grow store doing $10,000 a month — and shows the $100 surcharge, then lets you swap in your own plan, volume, and average order. It compares the all-in monthly cost of staying on Shopify Payments against moving to a third-party gateway and paying the surcharge.

The gap between the two paths isn't one fee — it's two stacked on top of each other: the third-party gateway's own processing rate, plus Shopify's surcharge on top of it. That surcharge is what moves the most as you change plans: it shrinks from 2% on Basic to 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and just 0.2% on Plus, so the same third-party volume adds far less on Advanced and Plus than it does on Basic, where the full 2% applies to every dollar. The charts show the surcharge across plans and that all-in comparison side by side.

Source: Shopify Payments rates and third-party surcharge (verified July 2026); third-party line uses Authorize.net's US All-in-One published rate as one reference.

When a Third-Party Gateway Wins

The surcharge is not always a reason to say no. Sometimes an outside gateway is the only way to trade, and sometimes it earns its keep. Here is the honest go/no-go — find the row that matches you.

The pattern is simple: if Shopify Payments is available and your needs are ordinary, its zero surcharge and lower rates are hard to beat. A third-party gateway wins on necessity (no Shopify Payments in your region), capability (high-risk or specialized processing), or a rate gap wide enough to survive the surcharge. If none of those apply, the math usually says no.

PayPal on Shopify

PayPal deserves its own note because it blurs the line between “gateway” and “payment method.” On new Shopify stores, PayPal Express Checkout is set up automatically as an additional way to pay — surcharge-free, as covered above. What's less obvious is that PayPal plays two roles at once: that express method, and a fuller gateway of its own (via Braintree) that some merchants run instead of, or alongside, Shopify Payments.

Offering more than one recognizable way to pay isn't just convenience — it protects the sale. In Baymard Institute's checkout research, 10% of checkout abandoners cited too few payment methods. Pairing Shopify Payments with PayPal Express covers the two options most buyers look for without adding a surcharge to either.

Switching Gateways Safely

Changing gateways is low-risk if you follow the order of operations. Shopify keeps sensible guardrails — only one credit-card provider is active at a time, and only the store owner can make the change — so the main job is sequencing it cleanly.

Getting Paid: Payouts

Choosing a gateway also chooses your payout path. With Shopify Payments, approved funds settle and land in your bank on Shopify's schedule, visible right inside the admin. With a third-party gateway, that provider owns the payout timing and reporting, so you reconcile in two places. If payout speed and cash flow are part of your decision, our guide to how Shopify pays you walks through the schedules and holds in detail.

The Bottom Line

Picking a Shopify payment gateway comes down to one question with a clear default. For most stores, Shopify Payments is the right answer: it's built in, it charges no third-party surcharge, and Shop Pay lifts conversion. You reach for an outside gateway when you have to — no Shopify Payments in your country, a high-risk model, a committed processor — or when the numbers genuinely favor it.

Frequently Asked Questions