Shopify Payments in Australia: rates, payouts, chargebacks and surcharging

For most Australian Shopify stores, Shopify Payments is the right choice. It is built into checkout, it avoids the extra transaction fee Shopify adds when you use an outside card gateway, and it gives you one dashboard for orders, payouts and disputes. The cases where you look elsewhere are narrow: a product category Shopify Payments will not accept, a very high volume where you want a negotiated rate, or a business that already has a merchant facility it wants to keep.

The rest of this guide covers the numbers. Every rate below was checked against the provider's own page in late October 2026, and the sources are listed at the bottom. Payment pricing changes often, so check the live page before you sign anything.

Shopify publishes its Australian card rates on its pricing page. The online rate for standard cards falls as you move up a Shopify plan, and the plan fee itself rises. The third-party transaction fee is what Shopify charges you on top when you take payments through a gateway that is not Shopify Payments.

Two things follow from that table. First, using an outside gateway on Basic adds 2% to every sale, which wipes out any saving from a cheaper processor. Second, the step between plans is small on the card rate and large on the subscription, so moving up a plan purely to save on card fees only pays off at real volume. We cover that arithmetic for the top end in our Shopify Plus guide, and the plan fees in Shopify pricing in Australia.

Shopify's help centre says the minimum settlement time for Australia is 2 business days, and weekends and public holidays do not count. There is no minimum payout amount. You can choose daily, weekly or monthly payouts, and Australia is not one of the countries with limits on those options.

Payouts go to a bank account that meets Shopify's requirements for your country, or to a Shopify Balance account. In practice, the two-day settlement is the number to plan around. If you run sales on a Friday, money from those orders lands midweek, not on Monday. That matters for supplier payments and for cash flow in the first month after launch.

• Pick weekly payouts if your bookkeeper reconciles weekly. One deposit per week is easier to match in Xero than seven small ones.
• Pick daily payouts if cash flow is tight and you pay suppliers on short terms.
• Match each payout to its orders using the payout report in Shopify admin, not a bank statement total.

A chargeback happens when a customer disputes a card payment with their bank. On Shopify Payments in Australia the chargeback fee is $25 AUD, and Shopify returns the fee if you win the dispute. Shopify tells you about each chargeback with a response deadline, which is usually between 7 and 21 days. If you use Shopify Payments and do not add evidence yourself, Shopify submits your response automatically on the due date, so a blank response is a lost dispute.

Evidence that helps

• Proof of delivery with a tracking number and a delivery scan from Australia Post, Aramex or StarTrack.
• Your shipping and returns policy as it stood on the day of the order.
• Customer emails that show the product was received or that you offered a fix.
• A clear business name on the charge, so the customer recognises it on their statement.

Keep your policies public and clear. A well-written returns page prevents disputes before they start, and it is the first document a bank looks at.

These are the providers Australian store owners ask about most. The table shows what each publishes for online card payments. It does not tell you whether the provider connects to Shopify, because that depends on your store and country. Check Settings, then Payments, in your Shopify admin for the providers you can actually add.

Stripe's headline rate is close to Shopify Payments on the Grow plan, but the comparison is misleading for a Shopify store. If Stripe is connected as an outside gateway, Shopify adds its third-party fee, which is 2% on Basic.

PayPal is worth offering as a second button, not as your main processor. Plenty of Australian shoppers want it, and its rate is higher, but you only pay it on orders where the customer chooses it. We usually pair Shopify Payments with PayPal and a buy-now-pay-later option. See Afterpay and Zip on Shopify for how those fit in.

We could not confirm from Shopify's own pages that Tyro or Square can be added as online card gateways on an Australian Shopify store, so we have not listed them as options. If your business already banks with Tyro for a shopfront, ask Tyro and Shopify directly before planning around it.

The Reserve Bank of Australia decided that card surcharging on both debit and credit cards should end on 1 October 2026. The decision covers eftpos, Mastercard and Visa cards. The RBA also says businesses can still offer discounts, including to customers who pay by cash.

For an online store, the practical effect is that you can no longer add a card fee line at checkout for those networks. Price your products so the cost of payment is already inside them. Industry coverage says American Express, Diners Club, PayPal and buy-now-pay-later providers such as Afterpay and Zip sit outside the ban, and that American Express surcharging is under further RBA review. Treat that as a point to confirm with your acquirer, because the rules are enforced through merchant agreements.

• Remove any card surcharge app or checkout script that adds a fee for Visa, Mastercard or eftpos.
• Do not rename a surcharge to a handling fee or service fee. Regulators have warned that a new name does not change what the fee is.
• Weekend or public holiday surcharges are a different thing and are not affected, according to law firm summaries of the RBA decision.
• Re-check your margins on each product. If you were recovering 1.5% to 2% through a surcharge, that now comes out of price or margin.

Shopify Payments is not available to every business. Shopify keeps a list of prohibited and restricted business types for each country, and its eligibility page says the list is not exhaustive. If you sell age-restricted goods, supplements, or anything in a regulated category, read that list before you build the store. Our guide to selling alcohol online covers one example where this matters.

A negotiated rate can make sense at higher volume. A Shopify Plus store gets a lower listed card rate, as the table shows. Below that scale, the time you would spend managing a second gateway rarely pays back.

If you are setting up a new store, payments are part of every package we build. Launch includes Shopify Payments, Afterpay or Zip and PayPal, set up with GST and shipping zones. If you are comparing platforms first, our Shopify vs WooCommerce guide covers how payments differ.