Just launched your Shopify store in Singapore and not sure what payment gateways to add? Shopify offers over 40+ payment gateways for stores in Singapore, so it can be abit confusing at the start as to which is the best payment gateway to use.
The default payment gateway for all Shopify stores is Shopify payments, but they offer limited payment methods for credit cards and debit cards. What if you want to add Paynow, Atome or ShopBack to your store as a payment method? That’s where other third-party gateways come in.
When choosing your payment gateway, there are two main factors that we want to pay close attention to: transaction fees, and availability of payment methods. Note that you can also add multiple payment gateways that gives your customers flexibility to choose how they want to pay.
We’ll take a closer look at the popular payment gateways to see if it makes sense to add them to your Shopify store!
Table of Contents
What is a Payment Gateway on Shopify?
Let’s get the definition out of the way just so we don’t get confused. Payment gateways are not the same as payment method (or payment modes), although they can possibly offer their own payment methods as well. Shopify payments, HitPay, Stripe are examples of payment gateways whilst some popular payment methods are Visa, Mastercard, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Paynow, and GrabPay.
Do I Need a Payment Gateway on My Shopify Store?
Unless you plan to manually collect payment (i.e. Bank Deposit, Money Order, Cash-on-Delivery), you’ll want to have a payment gateway in order to accept payment for orders online.
It’s just so much easier and fuss-free when it comes to collecting payment immediately online versus manual payments. Payment Gateways allow your customers to pay using credit or debit cards as well as other popular local payment methods like PayLah, GrabPay, ShopBack, etc.
When are you charged for using a payment gateway?
You should only be charged transaction fees when an actual transaction happens on your store and there are no fees charged for the initial integration with Shopify. The transaction fees are typically a percentage of the transaction value plus a fixed fee per transaction.
So if you had an offline manual order that the customer had already paid for in cash, creating this order in Shopify will not trigger any transaction fees.
In a way, payment providers also want your store to do well and scale to bigger sales volume so that they earn more from the transaction fees.
The actual fees vary (quite differently) based on the provider. I’ll be doing a much deeper comparison of the fees in the next section.
How Do You Receive Payouts? What Fees Are Involved?
Payout Schedule
Depending on the payment gateway you use, most of the time you should be able to set your own payout schedule.
You can select daily if your store has high transaction volume and you need to cash quickly to roll, weekly or monthly if you don’t need so frequent payouts (it also helps with accounting so you don’t have so many transactions!).
Most people might say, “of course I want my cash right now la so I’ll set daily”. My personal take is do what is most comfortable for you and the cash flow of your business. I prefer to set to weekly just so it’s much easier for me to track and tally the payouts from each of my Shopify stores in my corporate bank account.
(You can always change this setting later on if you need to.)
Any Payout Fees?
Payment gateways typically do not charge for payouts (if your payment gateway does this, then it might make sense to switch to better alternatives).
However do note that there may be foreign exchange “costs” involved if you are receiving payments in currencies other than the default SGD. These aren’t really considered as fees, but you may lose slightly on the forex conversion rates.
Also if you are receiving payouts in foreign currencies, you’ll definitely want to check if your bank account accepts foreign currency deposits, and whether they charge any fees for receiving foreign currency payments!
💡Most of the time I use Aspire as my corporate bank account to receive payouts. They offer competitive foreign exchange rates and can receive both local and overseas payments. As I am also spending over 5-figures a month on advertising spend (Facebook and Google ads), Aspire also gives me 1% cashback (with no cap) on all of my advertising spending.
You can view my full review on corporate bank accounts here.
Payment Gateways for Shopify Stores Based in Singapore
Here is a full list of all payment gateways that are accepted for stores in Singapore, but honestly you’ll won’t use all of them as it’s a hassle to sign-up and manage so many payment gateways. Also, your money will be spread over all the different accounts so it’s better to be more concentrated and only add the ones with the best rates and offer the payment methods you need.
The more popular ones include:
- Shopify Payments
- Stripe
- Skrill
- ShopBack
- HitPay
- Ariwallex
- Amazon Pay
- WeChat Pay
Detailed Comparison of Shopify Payment Gateways in Singapore
💳 Shopify Additional Fees of 2% for Third-Party Providers: If you choose a third-party payment provider, Shopify actually charges additional fees ON TOP of the third-party providers’ fees where the amount varies depending on your Shopify subscription plan.
Shopify additional fees:
- 2% – Basic Shopify plan
- 1% – Shopify plan
- 0.5% – Advanced Shopify Plan
This means that if you are on the Basic Shopify plan and you add Atome payment method, for every transaction you will be charged 2% + Atome’s transaction fee.
These fees can add up to a pretty significant amount. So you’ll need to decide for yourself whether or not enabling these additional payment methods on your site will boost your conversion rates enough to justify the additional fees.
Because of the Shopify additional fees for third-party payment gateways, the cheapest gateway for credit and debit cards is definitely Shopify Payments. However you can still consider adding other payment methods that Shopify payments does not provide, such as PayNow using HitPay which charges 0.65% + $0.30 (for orders below $100) + 2% Shopify fee which may still be manageable fee.
Popular Payment Methods in Singapore You Can Consider for Your Shopify Store
Apart from credit cards like Visa, Mastercard & Amex. Some other popular payment methods you can consider adding are:
- Atome – Allows customers to pay in instalments (good for higher priced products)
- ShopBack – Gives customers cashback for online purchases
- PayNow – simple & easy way to transfer money
- GrabPay – allows customers to earn GrabPoints when they make transactions from their Grab wallet
Atome and ShopBack have gained quite a bit of popularity amongst consumers in recent times. HitPay offers most of these payment methods, however I find that the charges on Atome and ShopBack are abit on the high side (5%+), coupled with Shopify third-party transaction fee of 2% it can add up to 7-8% total fees that will eat into your profit margins.
These payment methods are meant to serve as a supplement to your store as they provide more flexibility for customers to pay. Whether or not they actually increase conversion rates is something that you have to test out on your own.
If you find that adding them is too much of a hassle or the fees are too high, then simply sticking with just credit and debit cards using Shopify payments are honestly fine as well to get your store started. Don’t overcomplicated the process!