Migrating payment methods to your Shopify account

If you're migrating to Shopify or consolidating stores, then you can migrate your customers' saved payment methods to maintain their subscriptions and one-time purchase options. This helps ensure a seamless transition without requiring customers to re-enter their payment information.

Migration scenarios and requirements

Migration requirements vary depending on the scenario, and certain situations don't require migration.

Switching from a secondary gateway to Shopify Payments

If you're currently processing subscriptions through a secondary gateway such as Stripe and want to switch to Shopify Payments, then you might not need to migrate payment methods if your customer payment methods are already vaulted in Shopify. In this case, you can deactivate your secondary gateway and activate Shopify Payments.

Contact information for payment migration

To discuss your payment migration needs, contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM) or Shopify Support.

When you contact Shopify Support to discuss your payment migration requirements, include the following information about your current setup:

• Your existing payment provider or payment gateway.
• An estimated number of your active subscribers or saved payment methods.
• Your accepted payment method types.

Shopify Professional Services payment migration service

You can use Shopify Professional Services to migrate payment card industry (PCI) credit card data into your Shopify store as a paid service. When you contact your Customer Success Manager or Shopify Support to enlist Shopify Professional Services, the team communicates with you and your third-party payment gateway to understand the technical requirements before executing the payment data migration.

Considerations when contacting Shopify Professional Services

Review the following considerations before contacting your Customer Success Manager or Shopify Support:

• Your store must be on the Shopify Plus or Enterprise plan to migrate your primary account numbers (PANs).
• You can import only credit card PANs with this service. Accelerated wallets such as Venmo, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, and bank account information aren't supported.
• You can't migrate PayPal billing agreements through this service. You must import these separately, as outlined in the API documentation.

If you choose to pay for Shopify Professional Services to migrate your PCI credit card data into your Shopify store, then you must provide the following information:

• The number of active subscriptions that you want to migrate.
• The payment gateways that you're using.
• The name of your subscription app provider.

Payment migration limitations

Migrating payment methods can be complex due to the nature of moving sensitive and encrypted payment data. There might be limitations associated with unsupported payment gateways and local payment methods. Contact Shopify Support to discuss any specific limitations that might apply to your migration.

Migrating saved payment methods for Enterprise

If your store is on the Enterprise plan, then you can store your customers' payment methods for one-time purchases. You can use Shopify Professional Services to migrate these payment methods to your Shopify store.

To learn more about payment migration for Enterprise, contact your Customer Success Manager or Shopify Support.

Migrating subscription payment methods

Migrating credit card primary account numbers (PANs) requires your store to be on the Shopify Plus or Enterprise plan and uses Shopify Professional Services. Migrating payment tokens is available on all Shopify plans and can be completed with support from your subscriptions app developer.

To migrate your subscription payment methods, you need to communicate with Shopify and your subscription payment app developer. The steps you take depend on whether you're migrating payment tokens or credit card data:

• If you want to migrate payment tokens, then you can complete the migration with support from your subscriptions app developer.
• If you want to migrate credit card data, then you must contact Shopify Support. Your store must be on the Shopify Plus or Enterprise plan.

To correctly import your information into Shopify, complete the following tasks in order.

Import customer records and products

Before you can migrate payment methods, ensure that the relevant customer profiles exist in your Shopify store. You're responsible for importing or creating customer records. Learn more about creating customer profiles.

You also need to add your products to your store before you can recreate your subscription contracts.

Import or set up payment methods

After you add your customer profiles to your Shopify store, import or set up your payment methods. You can import payment methods in one of the following ways:

• If you're migrating to Shopify from another platform, then you can use either the secondary gateway with slow drip method or contact Shopify Professional Services to migrate your payment methods.
• If you're an existing Shopify store owner and you want to consolidate multiple stores or move payment methods between a secondary and primary gateway, then you need to contact Shopify Professional Services to migrate your payment methods.

Recreate subscription contracts

After you migrate payment methods, use Shopify's application programming interfaces (APIs) to recreate the existing subscription contracts. You or your subscription app vendor are responsible for this step. After you complete this, you can continue processing your customers' subscription orders.

Slow drip payment method migration with a secondary gateway

As customers update their billing information — for example, when a card expires — their payment methods move from the secondary gateway to the primary gateway. This gradual transition, also known as the slow drip method, means it can take months or even years to fully migrate all payment methods, depending on when customers choose to update their billing details.

You can use a set of API tools to import subscription contracts into Shopify without migrating credit cards directly, and you can migrate customer information from the following payment gateways to Shopify:

• Stripe
• Braintree
• PayPal Express
• Authorize.net

These gateways connect as a secondary subscription payment gateway for billing only your existing contracts. All new contracts, or contracts updated after migration, are charged against your primary payment gateway.

If some of your subscribers pay using Stripe Link, then you might be able to continue billing them through Stripe using the secondary gateway method. Whether their payment methods can fully migrate to your primary gateway depends on your setup — contact Shopify Support or your Customer Success Manager (CSM) for guidance specific to your situation.

For more information about migrating subscription contracts, refer to the following developer documentation:

• Migrate customer information
• Migrate subscription contracts