Shopify Payments is a native payment gateway offered by Shopify. Using the gateway has many advantages, including access to features like Shopify Markets and a seamless checkout experience for both you as a store owner and your customers. Technically, the payment gateway is powered by Stripe.
Obviously for using the Shopify Payments you will pay transaction fees which vary depending on your country and Shopify plan (Shopify Basic has the highest fees while Shopify Plus the lowest).
Shopify Payments as a reason to migrate
Enabling the gateway in a particular region has a direct impact on Shopify's growth as without the Shopify Payments the gateway fees are often a blocker. If you are not using Shopify Payments (because it's not available in your country or you just don't want to), you will need to pay 2% to Shopify for every transaction on top of your payment gateway fees.
So merchants in 11 new countries can now be happy, because the native gateway is finally available. The list of new countries includes:
- Croatia
- Estonia
- Greece
- Hungary
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Malta
- Mexico
- Norway
- Poland
- Slovenia
It's clear to see the Shopify expansion strategy as most of the countries (except Mexico) are located in Europe. You can read more about Shopify's limitations in Europe in my article "Shopify in Europe."
There are still some European countries that haven't made it to the list yet, but they are in the top 30 by GDP list: Turkey, Ukraine, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, and Serbia. Hopefully, they will be added to the list soon.
