- Short answer
- Shopify Payments judges by the card's issuing country, not the buyer's address: cards on its Europe list are domestic, UK-EU sales international.
- Scope
- Shopify Payments card classification only; the rates themselves are set per region and per plan.
- What decides it
- The country where the card was issued — not the buyer's address, and not the order currency.
- The EEA exception
- Cards issued and used inside the countries Shopify lists for Europe are treated as domestic.
- Not the same charge
- Currency conversion is a separate fee from the cross-border one; one order can carry both.
- As of
- Shopify's domestic/international/EEA card page, its pricing overview, its international fees page and its card rates page, read August 27, 2026.
What makes a card sale international on Shopify Payments?
Domestic cards are issued and used in the same country or region as your business, and international cards are issued and used in a different country or region than your business. Shopify's international fees page applies the same test to what processing costs: one price for cards issued in your store's country or region, another for cards issued somewhere else.
Two things merchants expect to matter are not part of that test. Your customer's address is not the input, and neither is the currency the order was placed in. The card is the object being classified, and its issuing country is what Shopify compares against your own.
One rate follows directly, and Shopify publishes it for a single case: a store based in the United States processing payments through Shopify Payments is charged a 1% cross-border fee on all sales made with a credit card issued in another country.
The charge merchants most often mistake for it sits on a different axis: Shopify's international fees page prices the Shopify Payments currency conversion fee at 1.5% in the United States and 2% in France and all other Shopify Payments regions, and a single order can carry both.
This page answers which transactions Shopify counts as international; it does not print the rate table. What the international line actually costs beside the standard and premium lines belongs to our answer on how much more Amex and international cards cost.
When is a European card treated as domestic?
Shopify has a third card category, and it is the one that keeps some cross-border European sales off the international line. EEA cards, in Shopify's wording, are cards issued and used in specific countries and regions in Europe, and their treatment is stated in a single sentence.
EEA cards are treated the same way that domestic cards are treated.
Shopify's own tables for Europe name entries a merchant going by the abbreviation would not predict — Switzerland, Israel, Türkiye, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man all appear. Check the card's country against that page before you price the sale.
Do UK and EU card sales count as international?
Yes, and the reason sits upstream of Shopify: Visa and Mastercard changed how they classify this traffic after Brexit, and Shopify follows them. The classification is symmetrical — a UK store taking an EU-issued card and an EU store taking a UK-issued card are both on the international line.
What that line costs is the international rate for your region rather than one global number, so the figure depends on which Shopify Payments region your store sits in. Shopify's pricing overview states both halves in one paragraph.
As a result of Brexit, Visa and Mastercard have changed how they classify and charge for United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) transactions. To comply with these changes, Shopify classifies these transactions as international, and you're charged at the current international rate for your region.
What the pages we read do not publish about a foreign-issued Amex
The combination merchants ask about most, an American Express card issued outside your country, has no rate on the four pages we read on August 27, 2026: the card-types page, the pricing overview, the international fees page and the card rates page.
That silence is structural: the US card-rate table defines its premium category through domestic cards. It includes domestic commercial, corporate or business-tier cards, such as Visa Business, and all domestic American Express cards. Cards from abroad are handled by a separate sentence — if you process international cards and payment methods, then an additional charge applies above the base rate — and that sentence carries no percentage. Adding the premium line to the cross-border line would invent a figure, so we leave it unstated and price that traffic from your own payout data instead.
This article was written entirely by AI under human editorial direction. The editor sets the topic and structure, runs multi-stage validation on facts, links, and interactive elements, and verifies the output is useful from a business perspective. All claims are checked against official Shopify sources. Details may change — always confirm critical data at shopify.com.
Editorial Policy