My business is based in Korea, but I spend my summers in the Philippines. I just set-up my store, and because I’m here it forced me to register as a Philippines business, and now I find I cannot employ global credit-card providers because they don’t work here (they do work in Korea). Can I change my registration from Philippines to Korea, to solve this problem? How? I can’t find anything to click for that. Or do I just have to kill this store and open a new one from Korea…?
Thanks for that reply! I will try it.
If the business is actually registered in Korea, I would contact Shopify Support before creating a new store. The business country and payment eligibility are tied to the store’s legal and payment details, so changing your physical location while abroad does not necessarily mean you need a new store. Support can confirm whether they can update the registration to Korea and what documents they need.
I’d contact support and ask whether they can switch the store’s business registration from the Philippines to Korea and what documents they require. If they can’t change it after verification, then opening a new Korean store may be the only option.
@Sanshinseon Before you spend time on this, there is something worth checking that changes the answer.
Shopify Payments is not available in South Korea. Its also not available in the Philippines. Neither country is on Shopifys supported list. So changing your registration from one to the other will not get you Shopify Payments either way, because you are moving between two countries that both dont have it.
You can check yourself here, its Shopifys own page and its the only list that matters:
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments/supported-countries
Korea is actually the harder of the two for card payments, not the easier one. Stripe does not operate in Korea either, so the two biggest global options are both out. If the providers you have in mind are Shopify Payments or Stripe, moving to Korea makes your situation worse rather than better.
On the actual question you asked. Your store address country in Settings, General is editable, its just a field. What you cannot freely change is the country tied to an active payment provider, so if you have already activated something you will usually need to deactivate that first before the country will move. Thats the bit people hit and assume the whole thing is locked.
Also worth saying, and this might be a relief. Shopify asking for a country during setup is not the same as you having registered a business in the Philippines. It set your store address from where you were sitting. Unless you actually went and incorporated something there, you have not registered a Philippine business, you just have a store address that says Philippines. Much smaller problem than it sounds.
What I would actually do. Change the store address to your Korean business address, then go to Settings, Payments and look at the third party provider list that appears. That list is filtered by your country, so its the real answer for Korea rather than anyone guessing. Between that list and PayPal you should be able to take cards. Do budget for it though, because Shopify adds an extra transaction fee on top when you use a third party gateway instead of Shopify Payments, and it varies by plan.
And definitely dont delete this store and start again. A new Korean store lands you in exactly the same place, just with your setup work gone.
jessicalauren and MayraApps, Thank you very much for your answers. I will proceed to resolve this problem as you have suggested.
David
If you can create a Stripe account that supports South Korean cards and payment methods such as Kakao Pay, Naver Pay.
Lodawoj — will Stripe operate in South Korea?? From what I see, it does not…