Shopify told Slovak merchants it would arrive in Q4 2025. It didn’t. That is the single most important sentence on this topic, and there is a specific name behind it, not a general feeling in the market.
In June 2025, one of our Slovak clients, Ondrej Koprda (the Katsudo and Waragod stores), was told directly in a meeting with Shopify that Slovakia was scheduled in their system for Q4 of that year. That is the kind of information you plan a migration, a budget and a gateway contract around, and some merchants did exactly that.
Q4 2025 came and went. So did the entire first half of 2026. As of August 2026 Shopify Payments is not available in Slovakia, and Shopify has published no explanation and no new date. Ondrej’s comment today is short:
“Shopify Payments would come in handy.”
Where Slovakia stands today
Shopify’s list of supported countries covers forty markets and Slovakia is not one of them, even though the last two waves added most of its neighbours: Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. That leaves Slovakia as one of the last EU member states without Shopify’s own gateway.
A Slovak agency on the Shopify community forum summed up the problem precisely. Shopify Payments is:
“the one piece that’s missing when it comes to choosing a platform”.
Another Slovak merchant, in a thread opened in 2026, describes Slovakia as:
“one of the few EU/European countries where Shopify Payments is not supported”.
Shopify answered neither thread with a date.
Officially, Shopify says nothing. No publicly announced date, no roadmap, no statement for the Slovak market. The standard answer is that the country list keeps expanding.
That is exactly what you get from support as well.
What we know from non-public sources
According to information from people inside Shopify that we have as of August 2026, the launch has been postponed and the nearest realistic horizon is 2027. We cannot name the sources, and this is non-public information that Shopify has neither confirmed nor denied.
And we will say it plainly: treat even that year with caution. The only conclusion that can be drawn with reasonable confidence is that it will not happen in 2026, so there is no point in planning around it.
Why you will also come across the opposite claim
During 2026, articles appeared in the Czech and Slovak space announcing the launch of Shopify Payments in Slovakia as an imminent event. None of them rests on a Shopify announcement, because no announcement exists. The most likely origin of that wave is precisely the tip about the Q4 2025 plan, which spread among merchants and agencies, lost its original “quarterly estimate” caveat along the way and then took on a life of its own.
If you read a text like that, check two things: whether it links to an official Shopify source (changelog, help centre, the list of supported countries), and whether it states a specific date Shopify never published. In most cases you will find both.
What does not work without Shopify Payments
Shopify flags it in its pricing with an asterisk and the note “Requires Shopify Payments”. Without it, here is what you lose:
| Feature | Impact |
|---|---|
| Multi-currency in Shopify Markets | You cannot charge in any currency other than your default one, with the narrow exception of manual payment methods on Plus. The most expensive consequence, because it leads to duplicating the entire store. |
| Apple Pay and Google Pay | Wallets on Shopify run through Shopify Payments only. Neither Comgate nor GoPay can offer them in their Shopify integrations, and GoPay describes it as a limitation on Shopify’s side. A Slovak store does not have them at all. |
| Shop Pay | Shopify’s accelerated checkout with more than 150 million registered users. |
| Local payment methods from Shopify’s catalogue | iDEAL, Bancontact, Klarna, TWINT and others. Your gateway can offer them to you, Shopify cannot. |
| Duty and import tax estimation and collection | Relevant when you sell outside the EU. |
| Shopify Protect | Chargeback coverage applies only to transactions made through Shopify Payments. |
| Multi-entity setup | Selling from several legal entities. Plus and Enterprise only, and only with Shopify Payments. |
The second row is the most underrated one, in our view. The fee difference between Slovakia and Czechia is tenths of a percent, while missing Apple Pay and Google Pay on mobile costs whole percentage points of conversion. You will never see that on an invoice. Ondrej Koprda confirms it in practice: the wallets are missing from his stores and it is one of the things he misses most on Shopify.
What to do about it in practice
- Do not build a project on the assumption that Shopify Payments will arrive. If your business case only works with it, it does not work. That holds even when you get a date directly from a meeting with Shopify.
- Build your cost model around an external gateway and Shopify’s fee for third-party gateways. With an individual rate from a gateway you can get to 0.70% in total, which is below the best Shopify Payments rate we have seen in CEE. The absence of Shopify Payments is not primarily a cost problem.
- If you need those features now, solve the entity, not the date. A Czech s.r.o. running the store and receiving the payments is the only route to Shopify Payments that genuinely works for a Slovak company in 2026. Decide by what the missing wallets and multi-currency cost you, not by the difference in rates.
- If someone gives you a date, ask for it in writing and still do not plan around it. A migration, a budget or a gateway contract should not be tied to a date.
