Navigating Shopify's Complex Fee Structure

For ecommerce stores looking to make the switch from platforms such as Magento or Woocommerce to Shopify, one of the most important things to take into consideration is Shopify's complex transaction fee structure. Additionally, for shops already on Shopify, it is crucial to understand your transaction fees and find ways to reduce these costs.

This guide will walk you through Shopify's transaction fees for both Shopify Payments (Shopify's internal payment processing system) and external payment gateways such as PayPal, Braintree, or Authorize.net. Also see our guide to reducing Shopify Fees in the Profit Guide.

Understanding Shopify Payments

Unlike many other ecommerce platforms, Shopify offers their own payment system to merchants located in the USA, Canada, UK, Ireland and Australia. For folks based in these countries, Shopify Payments offers a convenient solution with little to no approval process, allowing you to start accepting payments immediately. Payment processing fees for Shopify payments vary based on which Shopify plan you are on. Additionally, each eligible country has their own fee structure.

You can see Shopify's payment fees categorized by country in the tables below:

USA:

	USA Fixed Fee	USA %	USA In-Person %	External Payment Gateway
Advanced Shopify - $299 / month	$0.30	2.40%	2.40%	0.50%
Shopify - $79 / month	$0.30	2.60%	2.50%	1.00%
Basic Shopify - $29 / month	$0.30	2.90%	2.70%	2.00%
Shopify Plus -Negotiable	Negotiable

Canada:

	CA Fixed Fee	CA Domestic Online %	CA Intl*/Amex Online %	CA In-person %	External Payment Gateway
Advanced Shopify - $299 / month	$0.30	2.40%	3.30%	2.40%	0.50%
Shopify - $79 / month	$0.30	2.70%	3.40%	2.60%	1.00%
Basic Shopify - $29 / month	$0.30	2.90%	3.50%	2.70%	2.00%
Shopify Plus -Negotiable	Negotiable

*The Intl fee column is applied when a customer's credit card is located from a country outside of Canada

Australia:

	AU Fixed Fee	AU Domestic Online %	AU Intl*/Amex Online %	External Payment Gateway
Advanced Shopify - $299 / month	$0.30	1.40%	2.70%	0.50%
Shopify - $79 / month	$0.30	1.60%	2.80%	1.00%
Basic Shopify - $29 / month	$0.30	1.75%	2.90%	2.00%
Shopify Plus -Negotiable	Negotiable

*The Intl fee column is applied when a customer's credit card is located from a country outside of Australia United Kingdom:

	UK Fixed Fee	UK Online %	UK In-Person %	External Payment Gateway
Advanced Shopify - $299 / month	£0.20	1.60%	1.60%	0.50%
Shopify - $79 / month	£0.20	1.90%	2.20%	1.00%
Basic Shopify - $29 / month	£0.20	2.20%	2.70%	2.00%
Shopify Plus -Negotiable	Negotiable

Ireland:

	Ireland Online Fixed Fee*	Ireland Online %*	Ireland In-Person %*	External Payment Gateway
Advanced Shopify - $299 / month	£0.25	1.60%	1.60%	0.50%
Shopify - $79 / month	£0.25	1.90%	2.20%	1.00%
Basic Shopify - $29 / month	£0.25	2.20%	2.70%	2.00%
Shopify Plus -Negotiable	Negotiable

* Ireland must include 23% VAT

You may have noticed a field in the right column called "External Gateway Shopify Fee". This is an additional fee - charged by Shopify - for using an external payment gateway such as PayPal for a given transaction. For example, if you are on the Basic Shopify plan and PayPal is used for a transaction on your Shopify store, you would be charged PayPal's fee (typically 2.9% + $0.30) + Shopify's Basic plan external gateway fee of 1%, for a total of 3.9% + $0.30 for that transaction.

Keeping track these fees can be very tricky, especially if you use multiple payment gateways. Fortunately, we have built a feature within our Shopify app, Order Metrics, which tracks your transaction fees on a per order basis and supports multi payment gateway usage.

For more details visit www.ordermetrics.io or apps.shopify.com/order-metrics-profit-analytics

Tips to reduce transaction fees

1. If you are an international company where Shopify Payments is not available, try incorporating through Stripe Atlas to create a US entity so you can use Shopify Payments, thus reducing the additional payment gateway fee. *Note that we have not attempted this so there no guarantees that it will work. Please let us know if this has worked for you.
2. Use a service like Kash which lets customers pay with their bank account instead of credit card. Transactions made with bank accounts have significantly less fees than credit card transactions
3. Negotiate. The larger plan you are on, the more power you have to negotiate with Shopify and other payment providers. If your transaction volume is high enough, you may want to consider increasing your Shopify plan size to get a lower processing rate.

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Order Metrics is the best way to monitor and improve your ecommerce store's profitability. We offer a 14-day free trial and very reasonable pricing. Start your free trial today on the Shopify app store - apps.shopify.com/order-metrics-profit-analytics