Selling on Shopify from abroad: what Shopify Payments really requires

You built the store, imported the catalogue, tuned the theme. All that is left is switching payments on. And there, Shopify Payments tells you it is not available in your country, or it activates and shuts down three weeks later, exactly when the first orders land.

It is the most common wall for a non resident seller, and it has nothing to do with the quality of your store. It comes down to one thing: the entity that collects the money.

Why Shopify Payments turns you away

Shopify Payments is not open everywhere. It runs in a closed list of countries, and that list follows the countries where Shopify's banking partner can pay funds out. If your country of residence is not on it, no store setting will change that.

The consequence is immediate. Without Shopify Payments you go through a third party gateway, and Shopify then charges an extra transaction fee of up to 2% depending on your plan, on top of what the gateway itself takes. On one hundred thousand dollars of annual sales, that is two thousand dollars gone purely because you did not use their in house solution.

The maths nobody does

Two percent of extra fees on a store doing $100,000 is $2,000 a year. A complete US LLC costs a fraction of that in year one, and nothing more than its annual upkeep afterwards.

What a US LLC actually changes

With a US company you no longer apply from your country of residence, you apply from the United States. Four things are then needed, and they go together.

A company registered in a state

That is the base. The choice of state matters little to Shopify, which only looks at whether the company exists and has a tax number. Wyoming is the most common one for its low upkeep.

An EIN

The company's tax identification number, issued by the IRS. Shopify asks for it during verification. It can be obtained without a US social security number, contrary to what is often written.

A US bank account

This is where Shopify pays out. A European IBAN will not do, the platform expects a US format account with a routing number. This is the piece that stalls most half built applications.

A US business address

It serves as the company address on documents and inside the merchant account. A business address supplied with the company is enough, this is not about renting premises.

Identity verification

Shopify also verifies the person running the company. A passport is enough in most non resident applications. Some flows ask for a US personal tax number: an ITIN settles that, though it is not required upfront.

The duty your own store triggers, and that Amazon absorbed

Here is the point most guides skip. On a marketplace such as Amazon or Etsy, the platform collects and remits sales tax on your behalf, because US law names it as the liable party. That is the marketplace facilitator regime.

Your Shopify store is not a marketplace. You sell direct, so the duty falls back on you the moment you cross a threshold in a state, typically one hundred thousand dollars in sales or two hundred transactions over twelve months. Shopify can calculate the tax for you, it does not file it and does not remit it.

In other words, the day your store takes off, you become a tax collector in the states where you crossed the threshold. Plenty of sellers find this out two years late, with arrears. The subject is covered in our article on sales tax versus VAT.

What about income tax?

An LLC owned by a non resident, with no employee and no office in the United States, is in principle fiscally transparent: it pays no federal corporate tax, and the profits are declared in your country of residence. How it works exactly is set out in our guide to LLC taxation for non residents.

That transparency exempts you from nothing on the US side. The company files form 5472 every year along with a stripped down 1120, and its state asks for an annual report. Both are mechanical, but missing the first one costs a $25,000 penalty.

The shortcut that costs the most

One practice goes around: using the Shopify Payments account of a relative living in a supported country. It works for a few weeks, then identity verification lands, the account is suspended and the funds frozen while it is reviewed. You lose your cash at the worst moment, the one where suppliers are waiting.

The US company costs less than that risk, and it settles the payout question, the gateway question and your credibility with American suppliers at the same time.

What we do in your place

LLC Place files your articles with the state, obtains your EIN from the IRS, provides your US business address and walks you through opening the bank account, the very one you will enter into Shopify. After that, the platform tracks your annual deadlines and warns you before each one.