This is the Shopify fee that costs merchants the most money and gets the least attention. It is not the plan price. It is not the standard payment processing rate. It is the extra cut Shopify takes when you choose to use a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments — and on a serious revenue base, it adds up to thousands of dollars a year.
The transaction fee by plan
- Basic: 2% transaction fee on non-Shopify-Payments gateways.
- Shopify: 1% transaction fee.
- Advanced: 0.5% transaction fee.
- Shopify Plus: 0.15% transaction fee.
That fee is on top of whatever your third-party gateway (Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net) charges. So a Basic-plan store using PayPal pays roughly: 2.9% (PayPal) + 2% (Shopify transaction fee) = 4.9% per sale. Switching to Shopify Payments brings that down to roughly 2.9% — a 2-point savings on every sale.
How to avoid Shopify transaction fees
Use Shopify Payments. That single change eliminates the transaction fee entirely. Shopify Payments uses Stripe under the hood, so the underlying gateway technology and reliability are the same — Shopify just routes payments directly without taking the additional cut.
The only reasons not to use Shopify Payments:
- It's not available in your country — Shopify Payments is rolled out gradually; check eligibility.
- You need a feature only your existing gateway provides — rare, but exists for some high-risk categories or specific compliance needs.
- You're in a high-risk category — Shopify Payments rejects merchants in certain categories (CBD, firearms accessories, some adult products). For those, third-party gateways are the only option and the transaction fee is unavoidable.
Doing the math on your store
- Take your monthly revenue.
- Multiply by your current Shopify-plan transaction fee percentage (0.5%, 1%, or 2%).
- That's the monthly savings from switching to Shopify Payments.
A Basic-plan store doing $30k/month pays $600/month in unnecessary transaction fees. That's $7,200/year — enough to pay for the next tier of the Shopify plan twice over. For broader fee context see Shopify fees.