Shopify payment methods in the Philippines: what actually works in 2026

That surcharge is the first thing most guides skip, and it changes the maths on every gateway below. On the Basic plan Shopify takes 2% of each third-party transaction; Grow is 1%, Advanced 0.6% (Shopify PH pricing, June 2026). A PayMongo card fee of 3.125% + ₱13.39 on Basic is really about 5.1% + ₱13.39 once Shopify’s cut is added. Read every rate in this guide as "plus Shopify’s 2% until you upgrade".

A card-only store turns most Filipino buyers away

Cards are a minority of online payments here. E-wallets — GCash, Maya, ShopeePay — run well ahead of cards in the payment mix, and cash on delivery still has a real share (DataReportal Digital 2026; Worldpay Global Payments Report 2026). If your checkout only takes Visa and Mastercard, you are asking the largest segment of the market to go find their card, and many will not. The job of a Philippine gateway is not "accept cards" — it is "accept GCash cleanly, then cards, then everything else."

GCash on Shopify: the two routes that actually work

There is no official GCash app for Shopify. You enable it through a gateway. Two are worth your time:

• PayMongo — GCash at 2.23%, an official Shopify app, no setup or monthly fee, and the clearest published payout schedule. It is the default for a typical Philippine store, and it is the default for good reason.
• Maya Checkout — GCash at 2.00% MDR, just under PayMongo. The per-sale saving is small but real at volume. Maya does not publish its payout timing, so confirm it during onboarding before you commit.

HitPay and Xendit also route GCash if you are already using them, but if GCash is the point, start with PayMongo or Maya.

2026 gateway fees, sourced and dated

Headline rates below. Every one still has Shopify’s surcharge stacked on top (2% Basic / 1% Grow / 0.6% Advanced). Fees change — treat this as a starting point and confirm against each provider before you price on it.

Sources: paymongo.com/pricing; maya.ph/business/pricing; xendit.co/en-ph/pricing; dragonpay.ph (waived-fees & shopify-pricing); paypal.com/ph/business; HitPay PH pricing (per April 2026 verification — the live page returned a 403 to our checker on 17 Jun 2026). PayPal % is merchant-reported. All accessed June 2026.

* PayMongo cards: 3.125% + ₱13.39 is the figure on PayMongo’s own pricing page, but independent trackers (Wise PH, NowPayments, HitPay’s blog) still cite 3.5% + ₱15, and one reading attributes 3.125% to international rather than domestic cards. Confirm your live domestic rate in a region-correct browser before you price on it. † HitPay GCash includes a 0.5% Shopify-plugin fee.

The headline rate is not the whole cost

Two numbers decide the real cost of a gateway, and neither is the percentage on the pricing page. The first is Shopify’s surcharge, already covered — upgrading from Basic to Grow drops it from 2% to 1%, which pays for itself fast once you are processing real volume. The second is settlement timing, because money you have earned but cannot touch is money working against your cash flow.

PayMongo is the only one that publishes a clear schedule: cards at T+3, e-wallets at T+2, and QR Ph, bank transfers and BillEase at T+1 banking days, paid out weekly on Wednesdays with a Tuesday cut-off, ₱10 per payout. Maya and DragonPay do not publish payout timing — ask, and get it in writing, before you switch your checkout over to them.

On buy-now-pay-later: BillEase does not sell to merchants directly, so the rate depends on how you reach it — 1.34% through PayMongo, 1.5% through Xendit or HitPay. The "2.5%" figure that floats around older guides has no sourced origin. If your average order value is high enough that customers hesitate at full price, BillEase earns its keep; if you sell ₱300 items, skip it.