Regional Support: Payments (UK)

[Victor]

Learn more about managing your payments while running your Shopify store in the UK.

This thread is part of the Regional Support threads offered for merchants in the United Kingdom. To see which other topics are available, you can visit the UK hub here.

Shopify Payments is available for businesses that operate in the United Kingdom and can be used to accept payments made by customers with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express debit and credit cards.

The cost of using Shopify Payments is dependent on which subscription plan you have chosen, with higher plans offering lower credit card processing rates. A full breakdown of these fees can be found on our pricing page.

To receive payouts, merchants will need to connect an account that:

• Accepts payments in GBP currency
• Is provided by a physical bank in the United Kingdom
• Is eligible for FPS transfers

Some types of businesses and services are not permitted to use Shopify Payments. Prior to signing up, review our list of prohibited businesses to confirm whether your business is eligible.

If you do not believe your business is eligible, or if you want to check alternative options, you can view the full list of integrated payment gateways for merchants in the United Kingdom. Orders processed via third-party payment gateways are subject to transaction fees, unless you have these gateways activated alongside Shopify Payments as your primary gateway.

If you have a question or comment to make about processing payments on Shopify in the United Kingdom, please post it below.

[Victor]

Hi @Dilan_Patel,

Okay, thank you. Can you tell me if you're trying add the details of a current (or chequing) account held with a UK banking institution, that allows for international charges? 

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Dilan_Patel]

Hi, yes I am trying to add a current account in the UK that allows international  charges.

[Victor]

Hi @Dilan_Patel,

Okay, I see. It sounds like you are trying to add a supported bank account so I think this will need to be looked at more closely. Please contact our support team so you can be authenticated on the store, and the issue with your Shopify Payments account can be reviewed directly.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Dilan_Patel]

When I am on the support page, what do I do exactly to be authenticated on the store?

[Dilan_Patel]

@Victor 

[Victor]

Hi @Dilan_Patel,

When you visit the support page, you first need to log into your store:

After you've logged in, you then need to enter in a topic or question. You can enter in something like "Shopify Payments bank account" before choosing the option to contact support at the bottom of the page:

Once you've clicked here, you'll see the different options available to you:

As you've logged into your store at the start of this process, you should be pre-authenticated when you speak to a member of our support team and they'll be able to take a closer look at your store and this issue than I can.

I hope this explains things, but please let me know if you're still having issues.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Dilan_Patel]

Also all refunds are given to my customers this Sunday.

[PJay]

What is the best Shopify Payments setup for UK stores selling to the US?

I have a UK bank account but my store currency is in USD, as most of my customers are in the US. I am therefore charged currency conversion fees on my payouts to my GBP bank account.

Now that Shopify accepts payments in multiple currencies, would it be better to enable this feature and switch my store currency to GBP?

As I understand it, my US customers would still be able to pay in USD at checkout, but the fees would be added to the price they pay?

Thanks,

Peter

[Victor]

Hi @PJay,

Thank you for reaching out with your questions. You are correct in saying that conversion fees when multi-currency checkout is enabled would be added to the total cost of the customer's order, as opposed to them being an additional cost on the merchant's end. There is no right or wrong way to approach this, but from a consumer's perspective, offering multiple currencies on a storefront is a good way of encouraging sales from different regions from around the world.

If, for example, you are focusing on bringing in customers from the USA, UK and Europe, there would be a significant benefit in offering at least USD, GBP and EUR as supported currencies on your site. If you were to go down this route, you could indeed then look to switch your store's currency from USD to GBP (as the fee for the USD to GBP conversion would be passed onto your customers). Be aware though that as this change would see customers paying in USD pay slightly more, this could have a potentially adverse affect on sales coming in from the USA.

If you're open to accepting multiple currencies via Shopify Payments, I'd recommend checking out our documentation on enabling your store to sell in multiple currencies, as well as the potential risks and consequences you will want to consider.

If you have any further questions on this topic, please let me know.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Oceanpayment]

Hi Peter @PJay 

My name is Lynn from Oceanpayment - Shopify official payment services providers 
There is very simple logic here, as your settlement currency is different from your customer's currency. So it a decision you need to make between either you will be responsible for the loss caused by conversation or your customer will be the one who responsible for it. 

Hope this will help! 

[Harts]

Hi there, the problem i'm having is that I want customers to pay offline only due to the nature of the business but "Payment gateway This payment method isn’t available on the store right now" appears when I try to complete a test order. I do not have a final price until I have completed the order so I only provide Approximate prices so I cannot charge people when they first make an order. Only when I have fulfilled the order.

so my question is how can I get a customer to place an order without making payment and when I do make payment it would be offline only such as Cash On Delivery.

[Victor]

Hey @Harts,

Thank you for getting in touch with your question. To clarify, are you wanting customers to be able to checkout and place an order without paying at the time, or knowing the final price? Would this apply to all products on the store?

This may be possible but would require a few things to be done. First, you'd need your messaging to be clear—customers would need to know that whilst they are placing an order with you, they are not paying at the time of checkout, and that they will be receiving an invoice from you in future where they will be required to pay for the order (which may include products with different pricing levels than what is advertised on the site). You could accept orders by enabling a manual payment method on the store, meaning customers can complete checkout without having to enter in a credit card or pay with any other viable method of payment. You could then email them an invoice for a draft order you create with the revised prices.

The issue with this is that you would then need a different gateway to accept actual payments from customers, unless this was done outside of Shopify. An easier option here may be to offer some sort of contact option where customers can reach out and inform you of their desired order, as opposed to having them checkout to do this—was this something you had considered? If you could also explain a little more what sort of products you are selling and why revising prices is vital, I'd be happy to offer more tailored advice if possible.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Harts]

Hi Victor,

Sorry I have only just seen your message.

I have done everything you have mentioned and works perfectly with a couple of tweaks. The business is butchery so they cannot cut everything to the exact gram for their customers and weights will vary a little thus approximate pricing. 

Thank you for your help:)

[Victor]

Hi @Harts,

Fantastic, I'm glad to hear you've worked something out. If you've any further questions please let me know!

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Yunetworks-com]

你好啊老铁

[Gartmor]

Hi. I'm new to Shopify. I've just set up Shopify Payments which has been embedded into my existing website using the Buy Button. Everything appears to be working fine. My question is around payments. I've just put through a small Visa payment to test that everything is working before putting the webpage out live. I can see in my own personal bank account that the amount has gone out (£0.80) on Friday 24th April. I've been looking at the business bank account to see if an amount has been deposited but nothing has appeared yet (Thursday 30th April). In the View Payouts section of Shopify Payments I can see the transaction I made on the 23rd. It says the Payout Status is 'Pending' and in the Payout Date column April 28th. Should the payment I made have gone through into my business bank account by now? If so, is there something in the Shopify Payments setup that I haven't done correctly? Any help much appreciated.

[Victor]

Hi @Gartmor,

First of all, welcome to Shopify! Thank you for reaching out with your question.

The pay period for Shopify Payments in the UK is 3 business days, meaning this is when the payments should have been processed on Shopify's end and sent to your bank. There can sometimes then be a slight delay on the bank's end of depositing the funds in your account, although usually this is less than a day or two. Given that you processed this order last Friday, that business day wait period would have only begun this week, and I would presume you'd see the funds in your account sometime today or tomorrow. The "pending" status should change to "paid" when the payout has been processed on Shopify's end, and if the set up was incorrect, the payout's status would likely be "failed" rather than "pending".

I would say it's likely that you'll see the money in your account by tomorrow, but if you still haven't please let me know here or contact our support team. If there has been an issue we'll be able to take a look at it and investigate in more detail.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Gartmor]

Hi Victor

Thanks for your reply. I'm afraid the payment still hasn't made it to our business bank account. Payout Status is still Pending. Could you look into it please? Thanks.

[Victor]

Hi @Gartmor,

Sure thing. I'll be sending you an email shortly to the email address linked to your Forums profile—please look out for that and get back to me there.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Andrew-houvy]

Hi, can i refund money for subscription? I forgot to close my store and today i have billed for 29$. Now i close my store and i will not use it

[Victor]

Hi @Andrew-houvy,

If you have closed your store today after you were charged, a member of our support team can authenticate you on the store and take a look at this for you and will see if we can process a refund for this charge. You can reach out to our support team here.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[naturom]

Hello Victor,

I am trying to understand Shopify Payments: Some features about it are remaining unclear and I believe you are the very right person to clarify these; and that this is the right place for asking to.

Questions:

1. Can Shopify Payments fully replace any other third-parties providers like PayPal? 
2. Is an American bank account mandatory for European citizens/merchandizers or does it work with European bank accounts? (e.g. U.K./France/etc.)
3. Is there any additional cost such a required subscription - like it is for others modules - or is it only "self founded" by your plans' credit cards rates?
4. Do some charges apply if I import/create [already paid] orders via the Shopify Orders API?

Thank you Victor.

With kind regards,

C.

[Victor]

Hi @naturom,

Thank you for reaching out with your questions; I'll be happy to answer each one below.

1. There is no right or wrong answer here, but generally Shopify Payments and PayPal serve different purposes—the former allows customers to pay via credit and debit cards, whilst enabling PayPal Express Checkout on your store allows customers to pay directly with their PayPal accounts. Many merchants enable both on their stores to give their customers more choice when it comes to paying for their order. I'll also point out that if you have Shopify Payments enabled on your store, you can enable PayPal as well and you will pay no extra fees to Shopify, and will only be subject to the processing fees PayPal charge.
2. The requirements for Shopify Payments are specific to each region it is available in. In the United Kingdom, for example, it is available to merchants based in the UK, and they'll be asked to provide a British bank account listed in GBP. American bank accounts would only need to be provided for merchants based in the United States wanting to use Shopify Payments.
3. No, there are no additional fees or a subscription for Shopify Payments specifically. You will just be paying the processing fees, which are automatically deducted from each transaction before the funds are paid out to you. The processing fees vary depending on which Shopify plan you are on, and they are listed on our pricing page.
4. No, you would not be retrospectively charged for existing orders you are able to import into the Shopify admin. Fees are only charged when an order has been paid for directly via Shopify Payments.

I hope this has helped answer your questions, but please let me know if anything is still unclear.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[Greg-1]

Hello 

i have recently opened my store online got a few ads running to drive traffic, there has been a lot of interest and potential sales. Except when my customers have tried to make payments it is coming up with all different error code and declining payments i even tried out using my own card which i know has funds in it and that was also declined i got my friend to try with a different card and payment also with fund and still not just coming up with card declined. Is there any explanation or fix to this i have spent money ads to drive traffic only to get nowhere when they try and pay. Since i opened on 15/06/20 i have lost about 15 sales. 

any help is greatly appreciated thanks. 

[Victor]

Hi @Greg-1,

Thank you for reaching out about this, and I'm sorry to hear that you've experienced this issue. Can you tell me more about what the error messages say, specifically? Are you using Shopify Payments or a different gateway to process card payments? Does this only seem to be when customers try and pay by card, or are there abandoned carts where customers have chosen other payment methods (e.g. PayPal) as well?

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[NomanSaeed]

using shopify payments - its almost 25 days - but the amount not transfer

[Victor]

Hi @NomanSaeed,

Thank you for reaching out about this. Are you referring to your payouts? Do you see a message in your admin stating that your payouts are on hold?

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[GTRS]

Hi @Victor,

I've read and understand the traits that a business account must have in order to be possible to use with Shopify Payments, but after some research I still can't clearly decide what business accounts are actually valid to use. I'll post some questions I hope you can answer or point in the right direction.

- is Cashplus Business a valid account to use or not?

- I've read on other posts that Transferwise is not supported, is this still the case? In the UK all the TW money on the business account is stored in Barclays, which is a valid bank (I'd assume), but TW itself does not seem to be supported.

- Specifically, what UK banks are supported by Shopify Payments? I would be looking out for a list of supported banking institutions.

It seems we're forced by Shopify Payments to use a high street bank to create a business account where we'll be ripped of by the worse deals possible (eg currency exchange, fees, etc), instead of allowing us to choose the best accounts for our business.

- I guess the only alternative then is not to use Shopify Payments and go with a 3rd party payments provider eg Stripe?

Thanks for any help!

[Victor]

Hi @GTRS,

Thank you for reaching out with your questions. If you're wanting to use Shopify Payments, the bank account connected to the gateway must be one opened in the UK with a British financial institution—I believe this would disqualify Transferwise, as my understanding is they primarily provide virtual accounts, and from quickly looking at the Cashplus Business account you mentioned, I don't believe this would qualify either. You are free to try adding these accounts but I believe they'll likely be denied during setup, or your payouts would fail when you receive orders. Using a bank account opened with a UK bank would be your best bet in terms of connecting an account to Shopify Payments successfully. We don't have a list of banks whose accounts can be used, but any British-based bank with locations and branches in the UK should be fine to use.

We also recommend that the bank account in question be a valid chequing/ current account, as other bank account types (such as savings accounts) are not supported. If you wanted to consider other payment gateways, you can take a look at alternative options for UK-based merchants here.

I hope this has answered your questions but please do let me know if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[skyedyebycj]

Hello,

A customer has said she was charged twice for an order( €204.95 which was correct, and then €200 which shouldn't have been charged), but only one payment appears in my Paypal account. Is there anyway this can be looked into so I can tell the customer where her €200 is?

Many thanks,

Claire

[Victor]

Hi @skyedyebycj,

Did the customer provide a screenshot or any evidence of the €200 transaction? Do you see multiple orders in the Shopify admin, or anything in the abandoned checkouts section under the customer's name? If the customer is reporting that both charges appeared on their PayPal statement, I'd recommend asking them for a screenshot/ photo of the charges and then speaking with PayPal directly as the payment would have been processed through their gateway.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[skyedyebycj]

She showed a screenshot of her bank account and there are two transactions,
the €204 and the €200. But when I checked my PayPal account which it was
paid into there is only a €204 payment.
There is nothing in shopify in terms of abandoned checkouts etc that might
have caused it.

Thanks
Claire

[Victor]

Hi @skyedyebycj,

Okay, thank you for confirming that. I presume in this case they paid with their own PayPal account? Do you know if they see a record of the second transaction appearing there?

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care

[MrK1]

Hi

I need some clarification  on what banks I can use? I'm looking at Starling or Anna which are services suitated in the UK and both accept  FPS. The only thing is they are not like traditional banks which have a bricks and mortar presence. Are the likes of Starling/Anna accepted for Shopify payments? 

Thanks

MrK1

[Victor]

Hi @MrK1,

Thank you for reaching out with this question. You would need to provide a valid chequing/ current account opened with a banking institution that has a physical presence in the United Kingdom, which would exclude virtual banks that don't have traditional brick and mortar branches in the UK. It's possible that an account opened with one of these virtual banks may initially be accepted during set-up, but you'd likely have issues further down the road and we therefore advise against using these types of bank accounts.

Kind regards,

Victor | Shopify Social Care