Why Shopify Payments quietly costs you 25–45% more than it should

Shopify Payments is brilliant for week one. By the time you cross £10,000 per month on cards, it’s usually the most expensive thing in your stack — and you’re paying for convenience you no longer need.

The headline number

Across the merchants we’ve moved off Shopify Payments in the last 18 months, the average all-in saving is between 25% and 45%. That’s not just the headline processing rate; it’s every cost on your statement: scheme fees, interchange, authorisation, gateway, refund, chargeback.

Where the savings come from

There are four levers, and they compound:

1. Mainstream acquirer rates. A real acquirer competing for your business prices below Shopify’s flat rate, especially on debit and contactless.
2. Interchange-plus pricing. Once you’re past £10k/month, blended pricing stops making sense. Interchange-plus exposes the real cost of each card and most of the time, that’s lower.
3. Real account management. Better risk handling means fewer false declines, which is worth more than the rate cut on a busy weekend.
4. No platform tax. Shopify takes a margin on every payment as part of the stack. Switching gateway breaks that link.

What it doesn’t change

• Your Shopify store. The customer still checks out the same way.
• Your reporting. Modern gateways feed back into your existing tools.
• Your conversion rate (it usually goes up, but plan for parity).

What we actually do

We pull your last three months of statements, model both onsite and offsite gateway options, and come back with a like-for-like quote. If the saving doesn’t clear a meaningful bar, we tell you to stay put. We say no a lot.

Want us to run yours? Send us a recent statement.