I noticed that a transaction fee was higher than expected for goods shipped to Northern Ireland where the shipping and billing address were Northern Irish addresses.
There shouldn’t be any doubt that Northern Ireland is part of the UK. And indeed UK is an abbreviation of " United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Why does Shopify not make the distinction between the north and south and only refer to “Ireland”? And that for a payment “made using a credit card issued in Ireland”, this “is classified as an international transaction, and thus, international card rates apply”?
There is no hint of that this would be an International transaction where Shopify fail to give a breakdown of fees. Nor give any hint or warning of inflated fees from a transaction initiated in the UK.
It sounds like the confusion stems from how Shopify classifies transactions for Northern Ireland.
While Northern Ireland is part of the UK, payment gateways may still treat it as an “international transaction” when using credit cards issued in the Republic of Ireland, which can lead to higher fees. Shopify may not clearly distinguish between the North and South of Ireland, and some payment processors automatically flag transactions from the Republic of Ireland as international, leading to additional charges.
To clarify, it’s a good idea to check your payment gateway settings and ensure you have the correct country settings. If the fees seem off, reaching out to Shopify support to confirm how they calculate these transactions and ask for more detailed fee breakdowns would be helpful.
If you have a Stripe UK account, you can check out the Stripe UK pricing webpage, or if you have a Stripe account from another country, you can check out the Stripe pricing webpage specific to that country. With this solution, only Stripe takes its own fees from the payments you receive.