- Short answer
- Shopify blocks a named list of countries and regions; Shopify Payments covers 40 countries and regions — everywhere else needs a third-party gateway.
- Shopify Payments list
- 40 countries and regions, counted 11 August 2026 — where your business is located, not where your customer is
- Everywhere else
- Over 100 third-party card providers; your admin filters them by your store address, so a listing is not availability
- The cost of that route
- Shopify adds a platform fee on third-party gateway sales; PayPal and manual payments are excluded while Payments is on
- Currency limit
- Only Adyen or Shopify Payments process local currencies; other third-party providers charge in your store's default currency
- Blocked outright
- Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, the Crimea region of Ukraine, and the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics in Ukraine
Where you can and cannot run a Shopify store
Shopify publishes a restriction, not a roster. Its unsupported countries and regions page names the regions it cannot serve, and gives the reason as "local regulatory requirements, commercial partnerships, and/or other pertinent factors".
No counterpart list turned up: across the supported-countries, unsupported-regions, third-party provider and pricing pages we read on 11 August 2026, no page carried a consolidated list of countries you are allowed to open a store from.
That restriction reaches past the checkout to the account itself. Shopify's phrase is business involving those regions, and its restrictions run from creating an account within them to shipping an order to them; for a business inside one of those regions it decides whether you can open a Shopify account at all, while the Shopify Payments list in the next section decides how you collect card money.
Where Shopify Payments is available
The second list is short, and it is about you, not your customers. Shopify Payments — Shopify's own card processing — covered 40 countries and regions on the official supported-countries page, counted 11 August 2026. Shopify's condition names the merchant: "You can use Shopify Payments to accept payments at checkout if your business is located in one of the supported countries listed on this page." A business located in Kenya selling to German buyers is outside it; a German company selling worldwide is inside. The list also moves — Shopify switched on 15 more European countries and regions in a changelog post dated 21 March 2025 — so check the page before planning around it. The grouping below is ours; the names are Shopify's.
The 40 countries and regions where Shopify Payments was available
| Grouping | Countries and regions |
|---|---|
| Europe | Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom |
| North America | Canada, Mexico, United States |
| Asia-Pacific | Australia, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore |
| Middle East | United Arab Emirates |
Shopify Help Center, Shopify Payments supported countries. Counted 11 August 2026.
Stripe is not a separate option where Shopify Payments already works, because Stripe is its banking partner — what that means for an account you already hold is covered in connecting your own Stripe account.
If your country is not on that list
Shopify names the route itself: "If your country isn't listed, or if Shopify Payments doesn't support your business category, then you need to use a third-party payment provider." There are over 100 credit card payment providers, in two shapes — a direct provider keeps the purchase on your own store, an external one sends the buyer to a checkout page hosted elsewhere.
Which of them you can switch on depends on your store address. Shopify's gateway availability page gives three steps: open the payment gateways page, choose your location in the filter, read the list. If what you wanted is missing, Shopify's advice is to consider the alternatives listed as available in your region.
Regional providers do appear in the Shopify App Store — the Paystack listing describes serving businesses in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Cote d'Ivoire and South Africa — but that is a vendor describing its own coverage, not Shopify confirming your country.
On the payment pages we read on 11 August 2026 we found no static country-by-country roster of gateways; availability is shown through the filter, at the moment you ask.
What selling without Shopify Payments costs you
The route has a price, and it is Shopify's, not your provider's: a platform fee on top of whatever the gateway charges — 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. It applies even with Shopify Payments switched on:
Third-party transaction fees apply on all third-party and alternate payment gateways even when Shopify Payments is activated. However, if you have Shopify Payments activated, then PayPal and manual payments are excluded from third-party transaction fees.
The exception is in the same breath: with Shopify Payments active, PayPal and manual payments are excluded. On Plus, Shopify says the fee "might be waived when you activate Shopify Payments, depending on your location" — a conditional, not a promise. Which sales attract a percentage at all is set out in when Shopify charges a percentage of a sale.
Currency is the second cost. Selling in local currencies "is only supported by Adyen or Shopify Payments", and orders placed through other third-party providers are processed in your store's default currency — you may set that currency to something other than your own, but showing prices in local currencies needs Shopify Payments specifically. If several markets are the plan, that decision continues in Shopify Markets. Outside the Payments list the store still runs — what you are deciding about is the extra percentage.
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.
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