When will Shopify Payments be available in South Africa?

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

Main topic: Availability of Shopify Payments in South Africa and implications for international checkout.

  • Current status: Shopify Payments is not available in South Africa. Shopify indicates it is expanding to more countries, including South Africa, but no timeline or launch date was provided.

  • Interim options: Merchants can use third-party payment gateways (e.g., PayPal, SagePay, iPay, PayFast, 2Checkout) to accept payments.

  • Key limitation raised: Without Shopify Payments, multi-currency checkout (customers paying in their own currency at checkout) is not supported. Carts revert to South African Rand (ZAR) at checkout. PayPal does not support ZAR, and apps that keep the shopper’s currency through checkout require Shopify Payments.

  • Impact: This constraint hinders international sales for South African merchants, as foreign customers cannot complete checkout in their local currency.

  • Outcomes/next steps: No concrete decisions or solutions emerged. Shopify support invited further questions but did not share an ETA. The request for a specific availability date in South Africa remains unanswered; discussion is open.

Summarized with AI on January 16. AI used: gpt-5.
1

When will shopify payments be available in South Africa

2

Hi, @Youngload_clo .

Thank you for reaching out!

As of now, Shopify Payments is not currently available in South Africa. However, Shopify has been working on expanding its payment services to several countries, including South Africa.

In the meantime, merchants in South Africa can still use other payment gateways available on Shopify, such as PayPal, SagePay, IPay, PayFast, or 2Checkout, to process payments from customers.

Please let me know if you have any further questions! I would love to learn more about your business. What type of products do you sell?

Talk soon,

3

Hey @Youngload_clo

You use other payment gateways and wait for the payment area upgrade to the country you are living in.
There are many other countries that are having the same problem as you.

4

Hi Emily, the problem is that we cant have international shoppers checkout in their own currency because their cart converts back to South African Rands at checkout. All the solutions to this are not available in South Africa. Paypal does not support Rands and all the apps that enable currency to stay in international shoppers currency require shopify payments. This really kills any chance of international trade with shopify if you live in South Africa. Do you have any kind of idea as to when it will be available in SA?