Shopify in Germany without a rgistered business

[jmichael]

Hello,

I'm just completing a book and plan to sell it via Shopify. I live in Germany, the book is in English language, but have not yet registered my business yet. In fact I do not plan to register my business before the end of the month.

Will this interfere with my being able to receive payments? Does anyone know/ or have a similar experience?

Thank you and Best regards,

Michael

[Nick]

Hi @jmichael,

Nick here from Shopify. Good question! 

The first thing I want to say is that I would highly recommend setting up and registering your business in the country you will be actively selling and working from. Even though the book is in English, but you are based in Germany, I would say to set up the company from Germany. Germany is a supported region for Shopify Payments (SP's). 

Just to confirm, is your question asking if you will be able to receive payments for sales before your store is a registered business, or do you mean the payments? Do you have any payment gateways set up yet? Let me know what you have set up with your store already to help give the best advice for your situation. The reason I ask is that if the account is set up as a sole trader in the meantime to have payouts enabled, you would risk losing money from potential sales by having an incomplete set up. This is because there is a timeframe of a couple of weeks to complete set up (or all the sales get refunded back to customers). So it's better for you to set up with what you have and then update to a business later once you are actually registered as one. 

Thanks, Nick