From $199/mo
Shopify Payments runs in a couple of dozen countries. Everywhere else, Shopify hands you a per-country list of third-party gateways, charges a transaction fee on top of the gateway's own rate, and leaves currency, payouts and approval to that gateway. If the list for your country is short, expensive or keeps rejecting your store, this page covers the alternatives, including running any gateway with an API on a checkout hosted on your own domain.
Shopify Payments is offered in a limited set of countries, mostly North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, and it requires a business and bank account in that same country. Shopify keeps the current list on its help centre; check it before assuming, because eligibility also depends on your product category and entity type.
Merchants in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Turkey, most of Africa, most of Latin America, Eastern Europe outside the EU and much of South-East Asia are outside the programme. For them the checkout still works, but card capture must go through a gateway from Shopify's per-country list.
Go to Settings, Payments, and open the third-party providers list. If a gateway you can get approved by is there, this is the least effort. Typical names by region: Razorpay, PayU and CCAvenue in India; Telr, PayTabs and Checkout.com in the Gulf; Paystack and Flutterwave in Africa; Mercado Pago and dLocal in Latin America; 2Checkout and Mollie for parts of Europe. Read the settlement schedule and reserve terms before you sign; the headline rate is rarely the real cost.
Some merchants form a company in a supported country, open a bank account there and enrol Shopify Payments through it. It is legitimate when the entity is real and the tax position is handled, and it is a serious undertaking: registered agent, bank KYC, accounting in two jurisdictions, and Shopify's own verification that the business is genuinely operated from that country. Get advice before spending on it. It does not solve the category problem: a restricted product is restricted in the new country too.
CascadeCheckout moves the checkout step to a subdomain of your brand, such as checkout.your-brand.com, and connects it to any gateway with an API, whether or not Shopify lists it for your country. Your Shopify store stays exactly as it is for browsing and cart. After capture, the order is written into Shopify with buyer, line items, shipping and discount details, so your apps and fulfilment run unchanged.
That opens the field to acquirers that serve your market but never built a Shopify integration: Airwallex or Checkout.com for cross-border, NMI-connected acquirers in North America, Nuvei, Adyen where you qualify, regional banks, or a crypto rail such as Coinbase Commerce as a backup route. You contract with them directly and disclose your business category; we provide the connection and the routing.
Routing matters more abroad. A card issued in Riyadh approves at a different rate on a European acquirer than on a Gulf one. With two routes wired, the cascade sends each attempt to the route with the best approval odds for that card, and retries the next route on a decline. Our merchants see an average approval lift of eighteen points over a single-gateway baseline.
| Listed gateway | Foreign entity | Own-domain checkout | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to live | Days | Weeks to months | 24-48 hours after gateway approval |
| Gateway choice | Shopify's list only | Shopify Payments | Any gateway with an API |
| Restricted category | Usually declined | Usually declined | Depends on the acquirer you choose |
| Backup route | No | No | Yes, cascade between routes |
| Third-party fee | Yes | No | Applies only to payments Shopify processes |
Yes. Shopify works everywhere it sells plans. Card capture goes through a third-party gateway from the list for your country, or through an external checkout connected to a gateway of your choice.
A limited group including the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and much of Western Europe. Shopify's help centre keeps the live list and the eligibility rules.
On most plans, yes: a transaction fee on each order in addition to the gateway's rate. The percentage depends on your plan.
Not through Shopify Markets' native multi-currency checkout. An own-domain checkout can present prices and charge in the buyer's currency through a gateway that supports it.
Live in 24-48 hours. Founder-answered support on WhatsApp.
Shopify Payments alternatives → · Multi-currency without Shopify Payments → · Own-domain checkout → · Third-party transaction fees →
CascadeCheckout is checkout software, not a payment service provider, bank or merchant-account seller. You contract with your own gateway or acquirer, disclose your real business category to them, and receive payouts from them. We never hold funds and we do not promise that any processor will approve you.