Shopify Payments vs Third-Party Gateways: Which To Add in 2026

A Croatian shelving retailer landed on our desk with a catalogue where every product is bought on numbers: shelf dimensions, load capacity per bay, total system weight. They did not have a checkout problem, they had a checkout question. When you go to add a payment gateway to Shopify for a market like theirs, do you use Shopify Payments and take the native path, or do you wire in a third-party gateway and accept the extra fee and the extra plumbing? That question, which sounds like a five-minute settings decision, quietly shapes your fees, your payout timing, your fraud exposure and how much of your checkout you actually control. We have made this call for industrial retailers, dental suppliers, plant nurseries and PPE distributors, and the answer is not the same every time.

TL;DR

• OUR POSITION: For most stores, and certainly for a single-market launch like the Croatian shelving retailer we rebuilt, add Shopify Payments as the native gateway first. The lower total cost, instant setup and unified fraud tooling beat a third-party gateway in the common case, and you only reach for a third party when a specific constraint forces your hand.
• WHEN TO GO THIRD-PARTY: Choose a third-party gateway when Shopify Payments is unavailable in your country, when your acquirer or bank relationship gives you materially better rates at volume, when you need a local method Shopify Payments does not support, or when a B2B flow needs terms, invoicing or an ERP tie-in that the native rails do not cover cleanly.
• THE HIDDEN COST NOBODY QUOTES YOU: Third-party gateways on Shopify carry an extra transaction fee on top of the gateway’s own processing fee, and they change how chargebacks, payouts and refunds behave. Budget for the integration and reconciliation work, not just the percentage.

Why This Decision Is Bigger Than a Settings Toggle

The first thing we check when a store like Metalne Police comes in is not the theme or the product images. It is the market, the currency and the buyer. Metalne Police sell metal shelving and storage systems in Croatia to a customer base their CEO described plainly: old school buyers who need a very straightforward and easy way of online shopping. That single sentence made the payment decision for us before we opened the Shopify admin. A confused checkout, a redirect to an unfamiliar third-party page, a currency that did not read as EUR, any of those would have cost the client the exact buyer they were trying to win.

So when people ask us how to add a payment gateway to Shopify, we push back on the framing. The mechanical steps take fifteen minutes. The decision that matters is which gateway model you commit to, because switching later means reconfiguring checkout, re-testing every payment method, and in some cases retraining a finance team on new payout and reconciliation reports. On the Metalne Police build we shipped a single native Shopify checkout localised in EUR, and a first-time visitor could go from “I need shelves for my garage” to a completed order without phoning anyone. That was the whole point. The gateway choice was in service of that outcome, not the other way around.

Here is the trade-off in one table, built from how these projects actually run for us and not from a feature sheet.

Criterion	Shopify Payments (native)	Third-Party Gateway
Extra Shopify transaction fee	None	Yes, added on top of the gateway’s own fee
Setup effort (our estimate)	Under an hour for a single market	Half a day to several days depending on integration
Checkout experience	Fully native, no redirect	Native or redirect, varies by provider
Fraud and chargeback tooling	Unified in Shopify admin	Split across gateway and Shopify
Payout timing	Predictable Shopify schedule	Set by the gateway or acquirer
Country and method coverage	Limited to supported regions	Fills gaps Shopify Payments cannot
Reconciliation with ERP	Simpler, one payout stream	More work, multiple sources of truth

We disagree with the standard advice that says “pick the gateway with the lowest headline processing rate.” After doing this for clients across Europe and beyond, we think that is the wrong lens, because the headline rate ignores the extra Shopify fee on third parties, the reconciliation labour your finance team absorbs every month, and the conversion you lose at a clumsy checkout. The cheapest rate on paper is often the most expensive gateway in practice.

Checks we run before touching the gateway settings:

• MARKET: Confirm which countries you sell to today and which you plan to add within a year.
• CURRENCY: Establish the presentment currency your buyers expect and whether you settle in the same one.
• BUYER TYPE: Decide whether this is B2C impulse, considered B2C, or B2B with terms and invoicing.
• METHODS: List the payment methods your customers actually use, not the ones that look modern.
• ERP: Ask early whether payouts must reconcile against an existing ERP or accounting system.

Shopify Payments: The Native Gateway

Shopify Payments is Stripe under the hood, wired directly into the checkout Shopify owns end to end. When we build a single-market store, this is our default, and Metalne Police is the cleanest example of why. We did not want the buyer to leave the checkout, see a different logo, or wonder whether the site they trusted five seconds ago was still handling their card. Native means no redirect, no visual seam, and no second brand asking for card details on a store selling garage shelving to a cautious buyer.

The other reason we lean native by default is cost. When you use a third-party gateway on Shopify, Shopify charges an additional transaction fee on top of whatever the gateway itself charges, and that fee is listed on Shopify’s own pricing page. Shopify Payments removes that extra fee entirely. For a store doing meaningful volume, that difference compounds every single month, and it is the first number we put in front of a client who is tempted by a slightly lower processing rate elsewhere.

What does native buy you operationally?

It buys you one place to look. Fraud analysis, chargeback responses, payout schedules and refunds all live in the Shopify admin. On the Metalne Police build, the client’s own team runs the catalogue day to day with zero server maintenance, and the payment side follows the same logic: one dashboard, one payout stream, one set of reports. We have watched finance teams at other clients lose an afternoon a month reconciling a third-party gateway’s payout report against Shopify orders. Native collapses that.

Advantages we have relied on:

• No extra Shopify transaction fee, which is the single biggest cost lever for most stores.
• Fully native checkout with no redirect, which protects conversion for cautious buyers.
• Unified fraud, chargeback and payout tooling inside one admin.
• Fastest possible launch, usually configured and live in under an hour for one market.

Limitations we have hit:

• It is only available in supported countries, and not every market your client sells to is on the list.
• It does not always cover local payment methods that dominate specific regions.
• At high volume, a direct acquirer relationship can beat Shopify’s blended rate, and the native path cannot use it.

For the shelving retailer, none of those limitations bit. Croatia is supported, EUR settled cleanly, and the buyer base wanted card and nothing exotic. The 18% conversion increase we measured against their previous setup came from the whole rebuild, structured spec data, browse-by-space navigation, a clean product page, but the frictionless native checkout was load-bearing. If we had bolted on a redirect gateway to save a fraction of a percent on fees, we believe we would have handed some of that 18% straight back at the payment step.

Checks we run before committing to Shopify Payments:

• ELIGIBILITY: Confirm the store’s country and business entity are supported.
• SETTLEMENT: Verify the settlement currency matches or is acceptable to the client’s bank.
• METHOD GAP: Check that no dominant local method is missing for the target market.
• VOLUME: Model whether projected volume would justify a direct acquirer instead.
• PAYOUT: Confirm the payout schedule works for the client’s cash flow.

Third-Party Gateways: When You Reach Past the Default

We do not treat third-party gateways as a downgrade. We treat them as the answer to a specific constraint the native path cannot solve. The clearest constraint is geography: if Shopify Payments is not available in a client’s country, the debate is over, you are adding a third-party gateway and the only question is which one. The second is method coverage. Some markets are dominated by a local scheme or wallet that Shopify Payments does not support, and no amount of fee savings matters if the buyer cannot pay the way they always pay.

The third constraint, and the one operators underestimate, is the B2B and ERP context. When a store is not selling to a shopper with a card but to a business buyer with terms, purchase orders and an invoicing workflow, the payment layer stops being a card field and becomes part of a finance system. That is where a third-party gateway, or a payment flow wired into an ERP, earns its extra cost.

Do you actually need a third-party gateway, or do you just want a lower rate?

This is the question we ask clients most often, because the honest answer is usually “you want a lower rate, and it will not save you what you think.” Between the extra Shopify transaction fee and the reconciliation overhead, a third-party gateway chosen purely on headline rate frequently costs more in total. We only recommend it when a real constraint, not a spreadsheet fantasy, is driving the choice.

Two of our engagements sit squarely in the technical B2B world where this logic applies. For Tehnodent, a dental equipment and supplies specialist, we built a state of the art WooCommerce store with ERP integration and their revenue increased by 80%. The reason that engagement runs on WooCommerce rather than a native Shopify checkout is precisely the ERP tie-in: when payment, stock and invoicing all have to agree with a system that predates the storefront, you choose the platform and payment flow that reconcile cleanly, not the one with the simplest checkout. WooCommerce gave us the flexibility to wire payments into that finance reality.

Ardon Adria, a Croatian B2B workwear and PPE supplier, is another spec-driven catalogue serving construction, industry and logistics buyers. That build carries ERP and XML feed integrations, and again the payment and data flow had to line up with existing systems rather than sit in isolation. When your gateway has to hand clean data to an ERP and consume an XML product feed, “just turn on the native processor” is not a complete answer.

Advantages we have used third-party gateways for:

• Coverage in countries and currencies where Shopify Payments is unavailable.
• Support for local methods a specific market cannot buy without.
• Direct acquirer or bank relationships that beat the blended native rate at volume.
• Payment flows that reconcile against an ERP or invoicing system in B2B contexts.

Limitations we plan around:

• The extra Shopify transaction fee on top of the gateway’s own processing fee.
• Split tooling: chargebacks and payouts live partly in the gateway, partly in Shopify.
• More integration and reconciliation work, which is real labour, not a one-time toggle.

Checks we run before choosing a third-party gateway:

• CONSTRAINT: Name the exact constraint forcing a third party, not a vague preference.
• TOTAL COST: Add the extra Shopify fee to the gateway rate before comparing anything.
• REDIRECT: Confirm whether the gateway keeps checkout on-site or redirects, and what that does to conversion.
• ERP FIT: Verify the gateway can hand payment data to the finance system that matters.
• SUPPORT: Check that dispute and refund handling is workable across two dashboards.

“Our clients are usually old school and they need a very straightforward and easy way of online shopping. Presta delivered exactly that!” – Davor Katalinic, CEO, Metalne Police

The Extra Fee Nobody Puts on the First Slide

Let us be specific about the money, because this is where the native versus third-party decision quietly turns. Shopify charges an additional transaction fee when you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, and that fee sits on top of the gateway’s own processing rate. Shopify publishes the exact figures by plan on its pricing page, and they scale down as you move to higher plans. The point is not the precise percentage, which changes over time and by region; the point is that a third-party gateway is never just the gateway’s rate.

In our scoping, this is where clients who arrived certain they wanted a specific external processor often change their minds. We put two total-cost lines side by side: Shopify Payments at the native rate with no surcharge, and the third-party gateway at its own rate plus the Shopify surcharge plus the reconciliation time. When the third party wins that comparison, we build it without hesitation. When it loses, and for single-market B2C stores it usually loses, we tell the client plainly and move on.

Here is how we frame the true cost of each path, using labelled estimates rather than invented statistics.

Cost component	Shopify Payments	Third-Party Gateway
Processing rate	Native Shopify rate	Gateway’s own rate
Extra Shopify transaction fee	None	Yes, per Shopify’s plan tier
Integration effort (our estimate)	Under an hour for one market	Half a day to several days
Monthly reconciliation (our estimate)	Minimal, single payout stream	Ongoing, multiple sources
Chargeback handling	One dashboard	Split across two systems

A candid admission: early in our Shopify work, before we were as disciplined about this, we let a client talk us into a third-party gateway on the strength of a headline rate that was genuinely lower than the native processing fee. What we underweighted was the Shopify surcharge and the monthly reconciliation load. Within a couple of billing cycles the client’s finance person was spending real time matching two payout reports, and the “savings” had evaporated. We now put the total-cost comparison in writing before anyone toggles a setting, and if a client still wants the third party after seeing it, that is a legitimate, informed choice. What we no longer do is let a headline rate make the decision quietly.

Checks we run on the cost question:

• SURCHARGE: Always add Shopify’s third-party surcharge to the gateway rate first.
• LABOUR: Price the monthly reconciliation time as a real recurring cost.
• VOLUME BREAK: Identify the volume where a direct acquirer actually beats native.
• REFUND FLOW: Confirm refunds and disputes are not slower or more manual under the third party.
• WRITE IT DOWN: Put both total-cost lines in front of the client before deciding.

How We Actually Add a Payment Gateway to Shopify

When the decision is made, the mechanics are straightforward, and this is the part every guide covers. We will give you the steps, but the value is in the order and the checks, which come from doing this repeatedly rather than reading the docs once. This is the framework we run on every payment setup, and we call it the Confident Checkout Setup because the goal is a buyer who never hesitates at the payment step.

THE CONFIDENT CHECKOUT SETUP, our four-step framework:

1. DECIDE THE MODEL FIRST. Before opening Settings, confirm native or third-party using the market, currency, buyer and ERP checks above. Changing this later is expensive, so we never treat it as reversible.
2. CONFIGURE THE GATEWAY. In the Shopify admin, go to Settings, then Payments. To add a payment gateway to Shopify, you either activate Shopify Payments directly or select a third-party provider from the supported list and authenticate with the provider’s credentials. For the native path this is where you set your business details and payout bank account. For a third-party gateway, this is where you connect the provider account and, if relevant, its API keys.
3. TEST WITH REAL SCENARIOS. We never call a gateway “done” after one successful test charge. We run a full-price order, a discounted order, a refund, a partial refund, and where relevant a failed card. On the Metalne Police build, testing the EUR presentment and confirming the checkout stayed native end to end mattered more than any single happy-path transaction, because the buyer we were protecting is exactly the one who abandons at the first sign of friction.
4. RECONCILE AND HAND OVER. We match a live test payout against the Shopify order, confirm the finance team can read the reports, and document how refunds and chargebacks are handled. For ERP-connected stores like Tehnodent, this step is the whole game: the payment data has to land in the ERP correctly, or the store and the finance system disagree, which is worse than not integrating at all.

What steps are needed to add a payment processor to Shopify?

The literal answer is: go to Settings, then Payments, choose your provider, authenticate, and activate. But the steps that keep you out of trouble are the ones around that: deciding the model deliberately, testing refunds and not just charges, and confirming reconciliation before you go live. We have seen stores activate a gateway, take real orders, and only discover at month-end that refunds were flowing to the wrong report. The activation is easy. The verification is where experience pays.

Checks we run during setup:

• MODEL LOCK: Confirm the native-versus-third-party decision is final before configuring.
• CREDENTIALS: Verify provider credentials and payout bank details are correct, not just present.
• REFUND TEST: Run a full and partial refund before launch, not after.
• CURRENCY: Confirm presentment and settlement currency behave as the client expects.
• REPORTS: Have the finance team read a live payout report before handover.

Get Your Shopify Checkout Built to Convert, Not Just to Work

If you are launching a new Shopify store, migrating from another platform, or wiring payments into an ERP, this is exactly the work Presta’s ecommerce team does day to day across Shopify, WooCommerce and Shopware. We are a good fit if you are selling into real markets with real buyers and you want the payment layer to protect conversion rather than quietly leak it, and we are honest that a simple single-market B2C store with no ERP can often be set up by a capable founder without us. The threshold where we earn our fee is when currency, ERP integration, B2B terms or a platform migration are in play. If that is you, tell us about your store and your markets and we will tell you straight whether native or third-party is the right call.

Can You Add Multiple Payment Gateways to Shopify?

Yes, and clients ask this constantly. Shopify lets you run more than one payment method at checkout: Shopify Payments alongside an express wallet, or a third-party gateway alongside a manual method like bank transfer for B2B buyers. The question is not whether you can, it is whether you should, and our default answer is: keep it as few as possible.

Every additional gateway is another dashboard, another set of payout reports, another place a refund or chargeback can hide. For Metalne Police we deliberately kept the checkout to a single native flow because the buyer wanted simplicity, and more payment logos on the page would have added confusion, not conversion. For a B2B store, the calculus changes: offering an invoice or bank-transfer option alongside cards is often necessary because business buyers do not always pay by card. That is the situation where a second method earns its keep.

When do multiple gateways actually help?

They help when you have genuinely different buyer types who pay in genuinely different ways: a B2C shopper who wants a wallet and a card, and a B2B buyer who wants terms and a bank transfer. They hurt when you add methods speculatively because a competitor has them. Our rule of thumb: add a second gateway only when you can name the buyer segment that will use it and estimate the share of orders it will carry. If you cannot, you are adding operational load for nothing.

Plantarium is a useful example of restraint paying off. They are the largest plant nursery in Serbia, and they came back to us after an earlier website engagement to build a full ecommerce storefront, where their revenue increased by 180%. We did not solve that by piling on payment options. We landed the presentation layer first, earned the commerce build, and kept the checkout focused on what the buyer actually needed. The lesson we carry from Plantarium into every payment conversation: expand deliberately, not reflexively.

Checks we run before adding a second gateway:

• SEGMENT: Name the buyer segment the new method serves.
• SHARE: Estimate the share of orders it will realistically carry.
• LOAD: Confirm the finance team can handle a second reconciliation stream.
• CLARITY: Verify the checkout does not become confusing with more logos.
• FALLBACK: Decide which gateway is primary if both are active.

Measuring Success: The 30/60/90 Day View

A payment gateway is not “done” at launch; it is done when the numbers say it is working. Here is how we measure a checkout after go-live, built on what we actually tracked for the clients in this article.

Window	What we measure	What good looks like
First 30 days	Checkout completion rate, payment error rate, refund flow correctness	Errors near zero, refunds reconciling cleanly, no payout surprises
60 days	Conversion trend versus the previous setup, chargeback rate	Conversion holding or climbing, disputes handled inside one workflow
90 days	Total payment cost as a share of revenue, ERP reconciliation load	Cost stable and predictable, finance team spending minimal time reconciling

For Metalne Police the headline result was an 18% conversion increase compared to their previous setup, and the native checkout was a direct contributor because it removed the friction their old-school buyers were most likely to abandon at. For Tehnodent, the measure that mattered was revenue, up 80% on a WooCommerce store with ERP integration, which tells you the payment-to-ERP flow was landing data correctly rather than creating month-end chaos. For Plantarium, the 180% revenue increase followed a deliberate, staged build where we did not overload the checkout. Different platforms, different buyers, same discipline: measure conversion, cost and reconciliation load, not vanity.

Checks we run in the measurement phase:

• COMPLETION: Track checkout completion rate from day one.
• ERRORS: Watch payment error and decline rates for setup mistakes.
• CONVERSION: Compare against the previous setup where a baseline exists.
• COST RATIO: Monitor total payment cost as a share of revenue.
• RECONCILIATION: Confirm finance time on reconciliation stays low, especially with an ERP.

Which Should You Choose: A Decision Framework

Here is how we route the decision for real client situations, not abstract personas.

If you are a single-market B2C store with a supported currency and no ERP, like Metalne Police, choose Shopify Payments. The native path gives you the lowest total cost, the cleanest checkout, and the fastest launch, and there is no constraint pushing you off it.

If Shopify Payments is not available in your country, choose a third-party gateway. There is no decision to make; coverage decides it.

If you need a local payment method that Shopify Payments does not support, choose a third-party gateway that supports it. Losing buyers who cannot pay their usual way costs far more than the surcharge.

If you are a B2B store with ERP integration, invoicing or terms, like Tehnodent or Ardon Adria, choose the payment flow that reconciles with your finance system, which often means a platform and gateway combination built around the ERP rather than the default native checkout. This is where we frequently recommend WooCommerce or another flexible platform over a locked native flow.

If you are a high-volume store with a direct acquirer relationship that genuinely beats the blended native rate, model it carefully and choose the third-party gateway only if the total cost, including the Shopify surcharge, still wins.

If you are unsure and you have no specific constraint, choose Shopify Payments. The burden of proof is on the third party, not the default, and we have seen too many stores pay more for a third-party gateway they never needed. If you are still weighing whether the platform itself is the right home for all this, our take on whether Shopify is worth it in 2026 covers the numbers behind that call, and if you are earlier in the build our writeup on the journey of a new website shows how the payment decision sits inside the wider launch.

Here is the final verdict, criterion by criterion, with the winner per row.

Criterion	Winner
Lowest total cost (single market)	Shopify Payments
Fastest setup	Shopify Payments
Cleanest native checkout	Shopify Payments
Country and currency coverage	Third-Party Gateway
Local payment method support	Third-Party Gateway
B2B and ERP reconciliation	Third-Party Gateway
Unified fraud and chargeback tooling	Shopify Payments
High-volume direct acquirer rates	Third-Party Gateway

For clients in the most common case, a single-market or few-market B2C store on a supported currency with no heavy ERP dependency, we choose Shopify Payments. It wins on cost, speed and checkout quality, and it protected the conversion that mattered for a cautious buyer base at Metalne Police. We choose a third-party gateway when a hard constraint forces it: Shopify Payments unavailable in the country, a required local method missing, a B2B and ERP flow that has to reconcile with an existing finance system, or a genuine volume-based acquirer advantage that survives the Shopify surcharge. Everything else is a preference, and preferences do not beat total cost.

To close the loop on the shelving retailer: the native EUR checkout we shipped was not the clever part of that build, the spec-as-interface catalogue was. But the native checkout was the part that could have undone everything if we had got it wrong, and choosing it deliberately rather than defaulting to a lower headline rate elsewhere is why the 18% conversion lift held. If we were doing it again today we would do exactly the same on payments; the only thing we would tighten is documenting the refund and reconciliation flow for the client’s team even earlier, so nothing about payouts is a surprise in month one.

If you are just getting started, prioritise the model decision and the native checkout: get Shopify Payments live, test refunds, confirm your currency, and do not add a second gateway until you can name the buyer who needs it. If you are auditing something that already exists, start with total cost and reconciliation load: pull the last three months of payout reports, add the Shopify third-party surcharge if you are on one, and count the hours your finance team spends matching payments to orders. That audit almost always reveals whether your current gateway is earning its place.

Next Steps:

• Confirm your market, currency and buyer type, then decide native versus third-party before touching any settings.
• Run a full test of charge, refund, partial refund and a live payout before you go live.
• If you have an ERP or B2B terms in play, map the payment-to-finance flow before choosing a gateway.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I add a payment gateway to Shopify?

Go to Settings, then Payments in your Shopify admin, and either activate Shopify Payments or select a third-party provider from the supported list and authenticate with your account credentials. That is the mechanical part, and it takes minutes. The part that actually matters is deciding which model you want before you start, because switching later means reconfiguring checkout and re-testing every method.

We always run a full set of test scenarios after activation: a normal order, a discounted order, a full refund and a partial refund. A gateway that passes one happy-path charge can still mishandle refunds, and you do not want to discover that with a real customer’s money. Once the tests pass and a live payout reconciles against the order, the gateway is genuinely done.

What steps are needed to add a payment processor to Shopify?

At minimum: choose your provider, connect it under Settings then Payments, enter your business and bank details for payouts, and activate. For a third-party processor you also authenticate with the provider account and sometimes its API keys.

The steps we add on top, from doing this repeatedly, are the ones that prevent month-end pain: test refunds before launch, confirm the presentment and settlement currency behave correctly, and have your finance team read a live payout report so nobody is surprised by how payments land. If an ERP is involved, we verify the payment data reaches the ERP correctly before we call it live, because a store and a finance system that disagree is worse than no integration at all.

Can I add multiple payment gateways to Shopify?

Yes. Shopify supports running more than one payment method, such as Shopify Payments plus an express wallet, or a card gateway plus a manual bank-transfer option for B2B buyers. Whether you should is a different question.

Our default is to keep it minimal. Every extra gateway is another dashboard and another reconciliation stream, and for a B2C store more payment logos usually add confusion rather than conversion. We add a second method only when you can name the buyer segment that will use it, which for B2B stores is often a real need since business buyers do not always pay by card.

Is Shopify Payments always cheaper than a third-party gateway?

In total cost, for most single-market stores, yes, because Shopify adds an extra transaction fee on top of any third-party gateway’s own rate, and Shopify Payments avoids that surcharge entirely. A third-party gateway with a lower headline processing rate can still cost more once you add the Shopify surcharge and the monthly reconciliation labour.

The exception is a high-volume store with a direct acquirer relationship. If your negotiated rate is low enough to beat the native blended rate even after the Shopify surcharge, the third party can win. We model that explicitly rather than assuming it.

Will a third-party gateway hurt my conversion rate?

It can, if it redirects the buyer off your site to an unfamiliar payment page. Some third-party gateways keep the checkout on-site and look native; others redirect, and a redirect is exactly the moment a cautious buyer hesitates. For Metalne Police, whose buyers we described as old school and friction-sensitive, we chose a fully native checkout specifically to remove that hesitation, and the 18% conversion increase held.

If you must use a third-party gateway for coverage or method reasons, pick one that keeps the checkout on-site where possible, and test the flow end to end from the buyer’s point of view before launch.

How does adding a payment gateway change refunds and chargebacks?

With Shopify Payments, refunds and chargebacks are handled inside one admin, which keeps disputes and reconciliation in a single place. With a third-party gateway, that tooling is split: some of it lives in the gateway’s own dashboard, some in Shopify, and you have to know which handles what.

We always test refunds before launch, not after, and we document for the client exactly where a chargeback is disputed and how a refund flows. The split-tooling reality of third-party gateways is manageable, but only if you plan for it rather than discovering it during a live dispute.

When is it worth bringing in Presta rather than doing this myself?

Honestly, if you are a single-market B2C store on a supported currency with no ERP, you can probably activate Shopify Payments and test it yourself in an afternoon, and you do not need us for that. We would rather tell you that than sell you work you do not need. Our writeup on why you might hire an experienced agency is candid about where the line sits.

The threshold where we earn our fee is when complexity stacks up: multiple currencies, an ERP that payment data has to reconcile with, B2B terms and invoicing, a platform migration, or a spec-driven catalogue where the checkout is only one part of a larger build. That is the territory of our Tehnodent, Ardon Adria and Plantarium engagements, where the payment layer had to fit a finance system or a complex catalogue rather than stand alone. If that is your situation, talk to our ecommerce team and we will give you a straight read on native versus third-party before any work starts.

Sources

• Shopify Pricing and Transaction Fees
• Shopify Payments Overview (Shopify Help Center)
• Shopify Third-Party Payment Providers (Shopify Help Center)