Getting rid of express checkout with paypal

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Main issue: Merchants want to remove or hide the PayPal Express checkout button (e.g., in Dawn theme) because it confuses customers and appears to force PayPal, hurts conversion, bypasses data collection, and can cause data mismatches.

Key concerns raised:

  • Customer confusion and drop-offs; some report checkout rate as low as 6% vs ~30% elsewhere.
  • Off-site/express flow bypasses email capture and custom fields (e.g., EU Tax ID), and may increase fees.
  • Gift businesses receive shipping details as both shipping and billing via PayPal Express, leading to wrong communications and chargeback risk.
  • Reports of PayPal holds after abandoned express attempts.

Shopify staff updates and guidance:

  • Since Nov 2022, theme code/CSS workarounds no longer hide express buttons at the first checkout step.
  • Only native way to remove there is to disable the gateway entirely (removes PayPal Express and PayPal payment).
  • Shopify recommends keeping express options due to conversion benefits (Baymard: 26% abandon due to complicated checkouts). Feedback has been forwarded to Product; no native toggle or timeline.

Workarounds/solutions:

  • Third-party app using Shopify Functions (Yagi Express Payment Hider) can hide express buttons while keeping PayPal at final payment step; marked as a discoverability “solution.”

Status: No native fix; discussion ongoing; merchants request a setting to hide express options.

Summarized with AI on January 5. AI used: gpt-5.
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Hi all,

Paypal isn’t known that well in the county where I sell the most, Belgium. The express checkout seems to “chase away” people. They trust the website less. It is a big negative point about Shopify compared to other websites. Hopefully there will be a solution in the future.