Can't activate shopify payments without SSN

[Ethryl]

I can't enable Shopify payments.

My business is registered in the US but I can't activate the Shopify payments because it requires an SSN and I don't have an SSN since I'm from India, and when I try to activate Shopify payments it says SSN can't be empty.

How do I activate Shopify payments if I'm not a US citizen but have the business registered in the US?

At least enable Stripe so that I can get along with building my store further!

[Holly]

Hi @Ethryl 

Thanks for reaching out. 

One of the requirements for Shopify Payments in the United States is a SSN, regardless of any business documentation. While you may be registered to conduct business in the US, the requirements of the specific payment gateway Shopify Payments includes a SSN.

You can use Shopify and set up the rest of your business information as you wish but you will need to use another payment gateway. 

I recommend you take a look at this comprehensive article on the payment gateways available in India here. 

I hope this helps.

Cheers!

[Ethryl]

Thanks for responding Holly but that doesn't help at all!

This is bogus quite frankly, why do you have shopify payments as an option
if it can't be used?

I mean I cant use stripe because it is removed/not shown because of shopify
payments and I can't use that either.

Can you please at least enable stripe, all other payment gateways are quite
useless, most of which are available are as useful as a leaky bucket.

[Holly]

I understand where you're coming from here. However, all payment gateways are set in relation to the business address you've linked to your Shopify account. If you've indicated the United States, the available payment providers are limited to that list. There is no way to request an access to Stripe if Shopify Payments is available. It is a limitation with our services and I will be glad to pass along this feedback to our developers. I see how frustrating this is for you and I don't want our conversation to go unheard internally.

With that being said, if you want to use Stripe, then an option would be to set up an account with Stripe outside of Shopify. Then, you can set up a manual payment paymeny method. This will allow you to offer instructions at checkout to guide the customer to pay for their order outside of Shopify with Stripe.

I encourage you to reach out to Stripe directly to confirm that this is an option for you and they will assist you in setting up your account accordingly.

[Ethryl]

Thanks, Holly.

Well, I suppose that is one way around it to use Stripe outside of Shopify, but I think that is a bad idea and will have drastic drops in conversion rates.

Right now I have tried every payment gateway available for the US none of them are viable — like literally nil. I'm trying the Windcave option as a payment gateway but that payment gateway is still processing my application so can't say yet.

I think Shopify is far from perfectly user-friendly as it is portrayed everywhere, this is not my first shop this is 3rd shop with Shopify. Before this I had two shops but at that time I used India as my country since I had no registered business in the US and at that time too no payment gateways worked.

I had no option other than PayPal at that time.

So I thought let's register an LLC company in the US and try my luck again but the result is still the same.

I'm still stuck with PayPal.

You can either Disable SSN for Shopify payments and Instead use an EIN, since that is issued by the IRS so you don't have to be a US citizen but still need the business to be registered on the US soil and in compliance with the IRS or  you can enable/offer  Stripe as a seperate payment gateway along with Shopify payments in the present or in the future that would be appreciated!

I'd say you need to have a dedicated team that should try to integrate every payment gateway from scratch as if a beginner who has no experience with 0 sales would do and check whether the listed payment gateways for that particular country work out of the box or requires jumping from several hoops to ultimately find out it is a dead end so that people don't have to waste their time trying each one, that way you'd be able to retain people a bit longer on Shopify.

I may sound rude or harsh, but ultimately, I hope my feedback will help others by bringing Shopify's attention to the struggles of beginners.

Regards,

Ethryl.

[Holly]

Thanks for all your feedback @Ethryl .

I really do appreciate your honesty and thoroughness in explaining your situation and how the limitations presented to you are impacting your future business. I understand how the option I presented to you could result in poor conversion or abandoned carts. It does seem that PayPal will be your best course of action albeit the least preferable for your business at the moment. 

With that being said, the time you took to provide feedback has armed me with great examples that our payment gateway services need improvement for our merchants worldwide. Our developers continue to improve our process thanks to feedback like yours.

Thank you for your time, Ethryl.

[Birte]

Hi Ethryl,

How are you? I am currently facing the same problem. Since your post here its been a while. Have you figured out a valid solution? Did Windvace work out?

Your feedback would help me a lot!

I appreciate your help.

Greetings,

Birte

[Ethryl]

Well, actually no, there is no other way, what I did was changed my store's
location to my country (India) even though I have my LLC registered in the
US which gave me the option to choose stripe again as a third party payment
processor.

But in stripe I used the address of my registered LLC which is US address,
so far no problem yet seems to be working.

[Birte]

Thank you so much Ethryl. That sounds interesting, too. I did not know that
one can change the store location apart from the business adress. I have
the LLC but I am selling purely on the German market, hence that sounds
actually interesting to me. I will see if I can find further information.

Thank you so much for your reply.