How to Set Up Shipping and Payments on Shopify: Rates, Delivery Times, Free Shipping and a Test Order, Step by Step

You can have the best product page and the best offer, if checkout jams, the sale is lost. And it's the moment your customer is closest to buying: they've already decided. According to the Baymard Institute, 40% of shoppers who abandon their cart do so because of extra costs, 20% because delivery is too slow, and 9% because their payment method is missing.

The good news: it's all set up once, in an hour, and checked with a single test order.

How Shopify organises shipping

Four ideas are enough to understand what you're setting:

• The zone: a group of countries or regions you ship to, for example "France" or "European Union".
• The rate: the price your customer pays in that zone. It can be flat, depend on order amount or weight, or be calculated by a carrier.
• The profile: a set of products that share the same rules. All your products are in the general profile unless you create another one.
• The location: where parcels leave from, your address or your supplier's.

It's all under Settings > Shipping and delivery.

Step 1: a simple structure

For a young store, the right structure fits in three lines:

1. One zone for your main country, with a standard rate.
2. One zone for the rest of Europe or the world, only if you really ship there, with a higher rate.
3. A separate profile only for different products: heavy, fragile, or shipped from another place.

Avoid multiplying profiles too early. When a customer orders products from two different profiles, Shopify adds up both rates, and your customer sees doubled shipping costs.

Step 2: show the real delivery time

Delivery time is your supplier's processing time plus transit time. Use the one you measured with your test order, not the one on the supplier's listing.

In Shopify, the rate name is shown to the customer at checkout. Put the delivery time in it: "Standard shipping (7 to 12 business days)" is far more reassuring than "Standard". And repeat that time on your product page, near the buy button: your customer should know it before reaching checkout, not during.

If your catalogue mixes products shipped from Europe and from Asia, that's exactly when a separate profile makes sense, with a different delivery time for each.

Step 3: free shipping, set up for real

In your main zone, add a second rate at 0, with a "minimum order price" condition. Shopify always offers the customer the cheapest rate they qualify for, so as soon as their cart passes the threshold, shipping drops to 0 on its own.

Set the threshold just above your average order value, to encourage adding an item. The math is in increase your average order value.

Important: a "Free shipping over 40" line in your announcement bar or a progress bar in the cart applies nothing. This conditional rate does. Both must say the same thing, to the cent.

The "Sold out" trap

If a visitor sees your products marked "Sold out" while you have stock, the problem almost always comes from shipping, not stock. Shopify only shows a product as buyable if it can ship to the visitor's country. Check in this order:

1. The country is in an active market, under Settings > Markets.
2. The product's shipping profile includes your location, and a zone covering that country with an active rate.
3. Your store password is removed, if you're testing like a real customer.

Changing theme never fixes this.

Step 4: payment methods

It all happens under Settings > Payments.

Shopify Payments. The main payment method: cards, and with it Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay, which you turn on in a few clicks. It asks for your business details and bank account to receive payouts. Fees depend on your Shopify plan, they're detailed in is Shopify free?.

Express payments. Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay save your customer from typing their card on their phone. On mobile, that's often the difference between a purchase and an abandoned cart. Turn them all on.

PayPal. A PayPal account is created automatically with your store, but its setup must be completed: under Settings > Payments, click "Setup incomplete" next to PayPal and follow the steps. Without that, you can't refund or manage payments properly. Many shoppers look for it, especially for a first order on a store they don't know.

Tax-inclusive prices. In France and across the EU, prices shown to consumers must include VAT. Check under Settings > Taxes and duties that your prices include tax, so your customer doesn't see the amount go up at checkout.

Step 5: the checkout itself

A few quick settings under Settings > Checkout:

• Guest checkout. Your customer should never be forced to create an account to buy. It's the default, keep it.
• As few fields as possible. Don't make the phone number required if your carrier doesn't need it.
• Your legal pages. Returns policy, terms of sale, legal notice and contact reachable from the footer. Shopify offers templates under Settings > Policies, to adapt to your store.

Step 6: the end-to-end test order

This step checks everything else. Shopify Payments has a test mode: under Settings > Payments, open Shopify Payments, click Manage, then turn on test mode. No real payment is captured, and you can pay with a test card, like Visa 4242 4242 4242 4242.

Then, on your phone, like a real customer:

1. Add a product to the cart for an amount just below the free shipping threshold. Check the rate and delivery time shown.
2. Add an item to pass the threshold. Check shipping drops to 0.
3. If you have several profiles, mix products from both and look at the shipping total.
4. Pay with the test card, then check the confirmation email.
5. Turn test mode off, otherwise your real customers can't pay.

If your supplier is connected through an app (like DSers for AliExpress), also check the test order shows up there.

If your store was generated with Scale Ova

OVA can open sales to the countries you name, with the rate you decide, and write the shipping mentions in your theme so they match what's set in Shopify. Every shipping change is shown to you for confirmation before it's applied. Payment methods still need to be turned on in your Shopify admin.

No store yet? You can generate it with Scale Ova from your product, look at it and change it for free, and only pay when you publish it on Shopify.

FAQ

Sources

• Reasons for cart abandonment, Baymard Institute, accessed 18 September 2026
• Setting up shipping rates, Shopify Help Center, accessed 18 September 2026
• Shipping profiles, Shopify Help Center, accessed 18 September 2026
• Testing Shopify Payments, Shopify Help Center, accessed 18 September 2026
• Setting up PayPal, Shopify Help Center, accessed 18 September 2026