What are the best payment gateway options for a South African business?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

South African Shopify merchants face limited payment gateway choices, especially for selling to US/EU customers, because Shopify Payments isn’t available locally. Key friction points are currency handling (ZAR vs USD) and bank payout requirements.

Guidance from Shopify: keep the store in the native currency (ZAR), use a supported South African gateway, and use a currency display app; checkout still occurs in ZAR. PayPal Express currency support must be confirmed directly with PayPal.

Paths explored:

  • 2Checkout: requested months of sales history, making it impractical for new stores.
  • USD-first setup: switch store currency to USD, open/verify a PayPal Business account, link it to an FNB (First National Bank) account, activate PayPal in Shopify, and receive payouts in USD. Trade‑off: you lose access to SA gateways (PayFast, Peach Payments, Yoco) and may deter local ZAR buyers.
  • ZAR-first setup: keep ZAR and use PayFast (cards/EFT); ask PayFast to enable multi‑currency so buyers choose currency at redirect.
  • Offshore/alternative routes: Stripe Atlas (US company/bank) to access Shopify Payments; consider WooCommerce with Peach Payments for custom multi‑currency checkout.

Status: no single “straightforward” solution; merchants pick between USD+PayPal or ZAR+local gateways. Discussion remains unresolved.

Summarized with AI on December 13. AI used: gpt-5.
7

No worries at all @AM13 , glad to know it helped you.

The only question I have now is whether Paypal Express will work. It’s listed as an option in SA but when I “check out” in test mode it says it doesn’t support my currency. I guess I’ll have to contact them directly?

That’s exactly right. Your best bet here is to talk to PayPal directly about this. Shopify wouldn’t have any control or say over a third party payment gateway and which currencies they support.

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