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Payment Methods by Country: Gateways and Shopify Payments Availability

Merchants search for country-by-country gateway lists but the actual limits sit inside theme code and Shopify's plan tiers, which is where this piece looks instead of inventing regional rules that were never measured.

Reference · September 6, 2026 · 5 min read · AI-drafted from sourced data

A merchant types “payment gateways by country” expecting a list that says which processor works in which market, and expects the theme they are about to buy to somehow control that. Neither expectation matches what is actually in the code or on the pricing page. Theme files decide how payment icons look and whether a country selector shows up in the footer. They do not decide which gateway a shopper in a given country can use. That decision sits with Shopify’s account settings and with the payment providers themselves, and no amount of scrolling through theme settings will change it.

Horizon’s payment icons block is layout only, nothing about country logic

Horizon’s blocks/payment-icons.liquid, labeled t:names.payment_icons in the theme, carries 6 settings as of commit 8b42ace on 2026-08-31. The list is horizontal_alignment (a select with 4 variants), gap (a range from 0 to 100 in 1px steps), and four padding controls, padding-block-start, padding-block-end, padding-inline-start, padding-inline-end, each running the same 0 to 100 range in 1px steps. That is the entire setting surface. There is no field for choosing a payment provider, no field for restricting icons by region, and no field for currency. The block draws whatever payment icons Shopify Payments and connected gateways expose, and the merchant only adjusts how those icons sit on the page.

Dawn’s sections/footer.liquid, named t:sections.footer.name in the schema, has 12 settings and 5 block types as measured at commit 258f00f on 2026-08-10. Among the 12 are color_scheme, newsletter_enable, newsletter_heading, enable_follow_on_shop, show_social, and enable_country_selector. That last one is a checkbox. Turning it on adds a country selector widget to the footer, which lets a shopper pick their country or region for display purposes such as currency formatting on markets already configured in Shopify admin. It is a toggle, not a configuration panel. It does not let a merchant map gateway A to country B from inside the theme editor.

The phrase itself does not exist in the themes checked

Across the categories tracked in this market, Art, Auto, Bags, Beauty, Clothing, Electronics, Food and drink, Home, Jewelry & Access., Kids, Pets, Sports, and Toys, there is no category and no section named anything like “Payment Methods by Country” in the themes examined. The words simply are not there, as measured against the Dawn and Horizon codebases cited above. So a merchant hunting for a built-in gateway-by-country manager inside a theme is looking for something that was never built into theme code in the first place, and the search term describes a feature that lives at the platform level, not the theme level.

What the actual price of running a store looks like

Since gateway availability tracks Shopify’s own plans and rates rather than theme settings, the numbers that matter here come from Shopify’s pricing page, checked September 5, 2026, in EUR.

PlanMonthly priceCard rate detailNotes
Basic€24/mofrom 2% + €0.25 EURStart for free, solo entrepreneurs
Grow€69/moincludes 8% + €0.25 EUR figure on pageUp to 5 staff accounts, up to €6,000 in credits
Advanced€289/mo6% + €0.25 EURUp to 15 staff accounts, live 3rd-party shipping rates
Plusfrom €2,100/monot listed on page excerptFor complex businesses

There is also an introductory offer across the board: 3 days free, then €1/month for 3 months. None of these figures relate to which countries support which gateways, they are simply what a merchant pays Shopify to run the store the gateways sit inside.

Theme quality context, kept separate from payment questions

Since the market data was already gathered, it is worth stating plainly and then setting aside. The market median theme price is $300 across a $100 to $500 range, out of 329 themes tracked on themescout.co as of 2026-09-04. Average rating sits at 4.53 out of 5 across 308 themes, with a median of 23 reviews. On Core Web Vitals, the mobile median across 247 themes with sufficient data is 85.5% of storefronts passing all three, with the best theme at 98.6% and the worst at 46.1%. On desktop, across 199 themes, the median is 86.2%, best at 99.2%, worst at 30.3%, based on CrUX field data from Jul 2026, meaning real visitor traffic rather than a lab test. None of these numbers say anything about payment gateway availability, they describe theme speed and market reception only.

Core Web Vitals: all-pass rate, mobile vs desktop

Mobile (247 themes) 85.5%

Mobile best theme 98.6%

Mobile worst theme 46.1%

Desktop (199 themes) 86.2%

Desktop best theme 99.2%

Desktop worst theme 30.3%

Method: CrUX field data, Jul 2026, real visitor traffic, not a lab test.

What to do with this

Check theme settings only for how payment icons display and whether a country selector shows in the footer, since that is the full extent of what Dawn’s sections/footer.liquid and Horizon’s blocks/payment-icons.liquid control. For actual gateway availability by country and for what the store will cost to run, read Shopify’s own pricing page and account-level payment settings directly, because no theme file changes either one.

Frequently asked questions

Does a Shopify theme control which payment gateways show up in a country?

No theme file measured here does that. Horizon's `blocks/payment-icons.liquid` has 6 settings and every one of them is layout, covering `horizontal_alignment` with 4 variants, `gap`, and four padding ranges each running 0 to 100 in 1px steps. None of these settings choose a gateway or filter by country. Gateway availability by region is set at the Shopify account and payment provider level, not in theme code.

Where do I turn a country selector on in Dawn?

Dawn's `sections/footer.liquid` has an `enable_country_selector` checkbox among its 12 settings, alongside `newsletter_enable`, `newsletter_heading`, `enable_follow_on_shop`, `show_social`, and a `color_scheme` picker across 5 block types. Toggling it on adds the selector to the footer. It does not configure which currencies or gateways are tied to which country, that logic lives outside the theme.

What does Shopify actually charge per plan?

Per Shopify's pricing page checked September 5, 2026, Basic runs €24/mo with card rates from 2% + €0.25 EUR, Grow runs €69/mo, Advanced runs €289/mo with a rate figure of 6% + €0.25 EUR listed on its tier, and Plus starts at €2,100/mo for complex businesses. There is also an introductory offer of 3 days free followed by €1/month for 3 months. Staff account limits differ by tier, with up to 5 on Grow and up to 15 on Advanced.

Is there a section or block literally called Payment Methods by Country?

No. Across the themes checked, the phrase does not appear as a section, block, or category label. The closest real elements are Horizon's `payment-icons` block, which just displays icon rows, and Dawn's footer country selector checkbox, which switches a UI element on or off without any per-country gateway mapping.

Do faster themes tend to have better checkout or payment setups?

The facts here don't connect Core Web Vitals to payment configuration, so no claim is made either way. What is measured is that 85.5% of mobile storefronts and 86.2% of desktop storefronts pass all Core Web Vitals as a market median, based on CrUX data from Jul 2026 covering real visitors rather than lab runs. Payment gateway availability is a separate, account-level matter untouched by theme speed.

Sources & data

  1. ThemeScout market aggregate ranking, 329 themes, ratings and pricing (checked September 4, 2026)
  2. Chrome UX Report (CrUX) field data on Core Web Vitals pass rates for mobile and desktop, Jul 2026 (checked September 4, 2026)
  3. Shopify pricing page, plan tiers and card rates in EUR (checked September 5, 2026)
  4. Dawn theme source, sections/footer.liquid, Shopify/dawn@258f00f (checked September 4, 2026)
  5. Horizon theme source, blocks/payment-icons.liquid, Shopify/horizon@8b42ace (checked September 4, 2026)
Cite this reference: Ecom Almanac (2026). “Payment Methods by Country: Gateways and Shopify Payments Availability.” https://ecomalmanac.com/codes/payment-methods-by-country-gateways-and-shopify-payments-availability/