Impossible to use Shopify for Global Stores

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I’m writing this ticket to inform and discuss the limitations of Shopify when it comes to selling in multiple markets and how handicapped it has made me as a Shopify user. I am based in a country where Shopify Payments are not supported.

  1. We are handicapped without Shopify Payments as Shopify limits you from using other currencies at checkout without having Shopify Payments. I plan to launch my store in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE but I cannot do so as the customers are not able to checkout in their local currencies.

  2. There are Store apps that provide multi-currencies support but once again, none of the apps are able to show a different currency at checkout page which defeats the whole purpose of selling in another market. Customer will abandon cart as soon as it sees another currency at checkout.

  3. I have tried hiring developers to custom code the solution for me. However, I recently found out that this is not even possible because developers need access to a checkout.liquid file which is only possible with a Shopify Plus plan that requires me to pay $2500 per month for a simple currency change. This is NUTS!

  4. Furthermore, all the Middle East/Gulf countries have a primary payment option of Cash on Delivery. Even by some reason if I am able to get Shopify Payments by registering a company in another country, I won’t be able to completely globalize my store because Manual Payment methods will only show up in primary market only.

The Outcome:

Shopify has made it impossible to avail simple features and avail a basic right of selling in multiple countries. It leaves me no option but to basically pay another subscription for another store (which honestly I don’t mind because I would never pay $2000/month for a feature that can simply be coded) but we do not have the energy to copy paste our whole store along with theme, settings, customizations , subscriptions and that only increases our hours of hard work.

We are honestly considering to move to some other open source platform where we can use basic features freely unless these issues are not addressed.

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