Start with cards and the phone wallets, Apple Pay and Google Pay, because they are what your customers are most likely to carry and they make paying on a phone a single tap. Then add the one or two methods your own customers already use in daily life, and stop there: a short, familiar list at checkout does more than a long row of logos.
Payment is the last step of the sale and the one with the least patience. Someone who has chosen a product, filled in an address and reached the payment page has already decided to buy. If the way they want to pay is missing, or the payment form fails on their phone, that decision comes undone very quickly. Here is how I think about the list, in the order I would build it.
What does every shop need at checkout?
Two things, before anything else.
- Card payments. Debit and credit cards are the method your customers are most likely to have with them. Any serious payment provider handles them, and your shop platform almost certainly connects to one or more.
- Phone wallets. Apple Pay and Google Pay let a customer pay with the card already stored on their phone, confirmed with a fingerprint or their face. They skip the part people hate most on a small screen: typing a long card number and an expiry date with their thumb.
A shop that offers only these two, and makes them work well, is in better shape than a shop that offers a long list badly. Look at your own analytics: if most of your visitors arrive on phones, the wallet button is the real front door of your checkout. Is your website mobile friendly? covers the rest of the phone experience.
Which local methods matter for your customers?
This depends on where your customers live, not where your business is registered.
People pay the way they pay everywhere else. A customer who settles every dinner bill with a bank app expects to see that app at your checkout. A customer who never uses it will not miss it. So the right question is not "what can my provider turn on" but "what do my customers already use on an ordinary day."
A few examples of what that looks like:
- In Spain, many people send money from their bank app with Bizum, and some still prefer to pay on delivery for a first order with an unknown shop.
- In Canada, Interac is the debit network people use in shops every day, and some customers would rather pay from their bank than with a credit card.
- In the United States, cards and wallets carry most of the load, and PayPal is still a familiar habit for online shoppers.
Whether your provider supports a given local method, and on which plan, changes over time and by country. Check it on your provider's own pages for your country before you promise it to anyone, including yourself.
If you sell across borders, the list can differ by country. Good checkouts show each visitor the methods that make sense where they are, rather than one long list for everyone.
Is PayPal still worth offering?
For many shops, yes, for one reason: trust.
A first time customer at a small shop they have never heard of may not want to type their card details into it. PayPal lets them pay without sharing the card with you, through an account they already have and a login they already know. For a new shop without reviews yet, that reassurance can matter more than the method itself.
The trade off is that it adds another account to manage, another dashboard for refunds, and another set of rules for disputes. If your customers are mostly repeat buyers who already trust you, it matters less. If most of your orders come from people who found you yesterday, it matters more.
What about buy now, pay later?
Services like Klarna let a customer split a purchase into instalments or pay a few weeks later, while you are paid up front by the service.
They make sense for larger purchases, where splitting the amount is the difference between buying now and waiting. Furniture, bikes, electronics, courses and similar items are the usual fit. For a shop that sells small, everyday products, they mostly add a logo and a fee.
Two things to keep in mind. These services often charge the shop more per sale than a card payment does, so they belong on products where they actually change the decision. And the way they are advertised on your product pages has rules attached, set by the provider and, in some places, by consumer law. Read the provider's terms for your country before you put "pay in instalments" next to a price.
Should you accept bank transfers or cash on delivery?
Both can be useful, and both shift work onto you.
Bank transfer suits business customers who pay against an invoice, and some shops that sell large, made to order items. The cost is that an order sits unpaid until someone checks the bank account, matches the payment and releases the order by hand. For wholesale and trade customers, an account with invoice terms is often the better shape. B2B online ordering goes into that.
Cash on delivery reassures customers who do not want to pay a shop they do not know yet. It also means some parcels are refused at the door, and you pay to send them out and back. If you offer it, many shops limit it to certain areas or order sizes, and say so clearly before checkout.
What actually drives the cost of taking payments?
Every payment method charges something, and the structure matters more than any single number.
- A fee per transaction. Usually a percentage of the sale, sometimes plus a fixed part. It differs by method, by card type and by country.
- Cross border and currency fees, when the customer pays in a different currency or with a card from another country.
- Disputes and refunds. A customer who disputes a charge through their bank can cost you a fee on top of the refund, depending on the method.
- Platform fees. Some shop platforms add their own charge if you use an outside payment provider instead of theirs.
- Payout timing. Money does not reach your bank account the moment the customer pays. Each provider has its own schedule, and new accounts often start with a longer one.
None of these are reasons to offer fewer methods by themselves. They are reasons to know what each method costs you before you switch it on, and to read the terms rather than the logo. What a shop build costs, by project type, is on the pricing page.
How many payment methods is too many?
When the list stops helping people decide.
A checkout covered in logos looks thorough, but it asks the customer to choose, and it adds scripts and buttons that each have to load and work on every phone. Each method you add is also one more thing to test whenever the shop changes, one more dashboard to check for refunds, and one more set of payouts to reconcile.
My rule of thumb: cards and wallets for everyone, plus one or two methods that a real share of your own customers ask for or use. If nobody has ever asked for a method, it can wait. The same logic applies to apps in general, and how many Shopify apps is too many explains why each addition has hidden costs.
What should you check before you launch?
A short test that I run on every shop before it goes live:
- Pay for a real order with every method you offer, on a phone, then refund it. Not in test mode only: one real payment shows you what the customer and your bank actually see.
- Check the confirmation email for each method. A bank transfer order and a card order should not say the same thing.
- Read the payment page on a small phone with the keyboard open. Buttons should stay visible and the form should not jump.
- Look at the order in your dashboard and confirm you can tell at a glance whether it is paid, pending or failed.
- Show the payment methods before checkout. A small line on the product page or the cart saves people the trip to the last step only to find their method is missing. The same goes for shipping costs and return rules, covered in what to put on your shipping and returns pages.
The short version
- Cards and Apple Pay or Google Pay first, and make sure they work on a phone.
- Add the local methods your own customers already use, checked against your provider's pages for your country.
- Offer PayPal if many of your customers are buying from you for the first time.
- Keep buy now, pay later for larger purchases, and read the terms first.
- Know what each method costs you, including disputes and payout timing.
- Test every method with a real payment before launch.
Choosing and testing payments is part of every shop I build, whatever the platform. If your checkout loses people at the last step, or you are about to open a shop and are not sure what to switch on, send me your site and you will get a fixed price and a launch date the same working day.