Sales by Payment Method on Shopify: What to Look For

A sales by payment method report shows how much of your revenue and how many of your orders came through each way of paying: cards, wallets, pay-later services, bank methods and, where you offer it, cash on delivery. Look at four things in it: what each method costs you, how often orders paid that way are refunded or never delivered, how the mix differs on mobile, and whether a method is missing for a market you sell to. This guide takes those in turn and ends with the actions that follow.

Why does the payment mix matter?

Because two orders of the same value do not leave you the same amount. The method a shopper chooses changes the fee you pay, the chance the order completes, and the chance the money stays with you afterwards.

It also matters before the sale. A shopper who reaches the payment step and cannot find the method they trust leaves, and that loss never shows in a sales report.

What does each method cost you?

Each method has its own fee structure, and the differences add up over a year. You will not find the fees in the sales report itself; they come from your payment provider's rate card and payout reports.

Things that vary:

• The percentage and the fixed fee per transaction. A fixed fee weighs more heavily on small orders than on large ones.
• Pay-later and instalment services. These are usually priced separately from cards, so check the rate you agreed.
• Additional platform fees. Depending on your Shopify plan and which payment provider you use, a further transaction fee may apply on top of the provider's own.

Here is an example with made-up round figures. Say a store takes 1,000 orders in a month at an average of $50. Method A costs 2% plus $0.30 per order, and method B costs 5% with no fixed fee. An order paid by A costs $1.30 in fees; an order paid by B costs $2.50. If 300 of the 1,000 orders move from A to B, monthly fees rise by 300 multiplied by $1.20, or $360, with no change in sales.

That is not an argument for removing method B. If those 300 shoppers would not have bought without it, $2.50 is a small price for a $50 order. Fees belong in your profit sum, which our guide to calculating net profit on Shopify lays out.

Do refund and undelivered rates differ by method?

They often do, and this is the part of the report that merchants overlook. Put refund rate and undelivered rate next to each method, not just sales.

Reasons the rates diverge:

• Commitment at the time of order. A shopper who has already been charged has a stake in receiving the parcel. One who will pay later, or on the doorstep, has less to lose by changing their mind.
• Ease of ordering. Methods that make buying nearly effortless also make impulse orders easier, and some of those are regretted.
• Disputes. Card payments can be disputed through the card issuer. A dispute costs you the sale and usually a fee as well, and a high dispute level can cause trouble with your provider.

Be careful with small counts. A method with twenty orders and three refunds does not have a 'high refund rate' yet. Our guide to tracking refund rate and return rate explains how to define the rates before comparing them.

What should you look for with wallets on mobile?

Check the share of mobile orders paid by wallet, and compare it with desktop. Wallets and accelerated checkout buttons store the shopper's address and payment details, which removes most of the typing from a phone checkout. Typing on a small screen is where mobile checkouts tend to lose people, so the mechanism is direct.

Signs worth following up:

• Wallet share on mobile is very low. The buttons may be switched off, placed below the fold, or hidden by a theme customisation. Test the checkout on your own phone.
• Mobile converts far worse than desktop at the payment step. Combine this report with a funnel by device; see our guide to finding where shoppers drop off in the checkout.

What about cash on delivery?

Where you offer it, watch undelivered and refused parcels more closely than sales. Cash on delivery opens markets where many shoppers prefer not to pay online in advance. Its cost is that an order is not income until the parcel is accepted and the carrier has passed the money on.

For each area and carrier, compare orders placed with orders delivered and paid. A refused parcel costs outbound postage, return postage, handling, and stock tied up in transit. As the guide to what Shopify's built-in reports leave out notes, delivery outcomes do not appear in a sales report, and for cash-on-delivery businesses they decide whether a region is profitable.

What actions follow from the report?

Turn what you saw into a short list.

1. Add a missing method if a country you sell to has a preferred local method you do not offer. Use the sales by location view to choose where.
2. Fix visibility if wallets are enabled but barely used on mobile.
3. Investigate outliers. A method with a clearly higher refund, dispute or undelivered rate across enough orders deserves a look at who uses it and for what.
4. Review cash on delivery by area. Keep it where delivered orders make money and restrict it where they do not.

For the report itself, Marka Metrics shows how orders are paid, with refund and undelivered rates, on its free plan, and breaks sales down by payment method using Shopify's sales definitions.

A short checklist

1. List each method's share of orders and of sales.
2. Note the real fee for each method from your provider's reports.
3. Set refund and undelivered rates beside each method.
4. Compare wallet share on mobile with desktop.
5. Check each main market for a missing local method.
6. Review cash on delivery by area and carrier, if you offer it.

Payment mix is a quiet lever on both conversion and margin, and it takes only a few minutes a month to read. If you want payment methods, refunds and undelivered orders in one view inside the Shopify admin, look at Marka Metrics.