Migrating payment methods to your Shopify account

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

Changing market or legal entity with Shopify Payments

When you change your Markets setup or legal entity, you might need to close your existing Shopify Payments account and open a new one. Your shop ID and your subscription contracts remain in place, but your customers' saved payment methods don't transfer to your new Shopify Payments account. Saved payment methods are stored with the Shopify Payments account that processed them, so they don't carry over when that account closes. This scenario is different from consolidating multiple shops into one, which requires migration.

For subscriptions paid with PayPal, the impact depends on whether the PayPal account changes. Refer to PayPal subscriptions and account changes.

Before you close your existing Shopify Payments account, contact Shopify Support or your customer success manager (CSM) to plan the change.

PayPal subscriptions and account changes

Changing the PayPal account used for subscriptions can interrupt renewals. PayPal billing agreements belong to the account that created them. If the new account can't use the previous account's agreements, then existing renewals can fail even when new PayPal checkouts work.

A legal entity change can affect the account and payment methods available to you. Changing Markets settings alone doesn't replace your PayPal account. Before changing accounts, contact Shopify Support and your subscription app provider to confirm the impact and plan any customer outreach.

PayPal availability depends on your new entity and integration. Review the requirements for PayPal Wallet in France, PayPal Wallet in the United States, or PayPal Express Checkout and subscription Reference Transactions. Confirm that your update flow supports the payment method you plan to offer.

If Shopify Support confirms that customers need to reauthorize PayPal, then use the following process to verify recovery before wider outreach:

Steps:

1. In your subscription app, identify active subscriptions using agreements from the previous PayPal account. Include agreements whose next renewal hasn't failed yet.
2. Send a payment method update link for 1 affected agreement to a customer who can complete a test. Use a flow confirmed to support PayPal by your app provider or Shopify Support. If PayPal isn't available, then confirm the supported flow for switching to another payment method.
3. After the customer completes the update, coordinate 1 renewal retry with your app provider. Check for an already scheduled attempt first, and confirm the retry succeeds without a duplicate charge.
4. After a successful test, contact the remaining affected customers before their next renewal. Send 1 update request per affected agreement. An agreement can support multiple subscriptions, and a customer can have multiple agreements.

If the test fails, then pause wider outreach and contact Shopify Support with the customer ID and the update and retry times. Use a replacement subscription only when the existing contract can't be recovered. A new subscription might not preserve its pricing, discounts, billing cadence, or currency.

Switching payment providers on the primary gateway

If you change the payment provider that's activated as your primary gateway, then you might not need to migrate payment methods. You can change from a third-party provider such as Stripe to Shopify Payments, or from Shopify Payments to a third-party provider such as Authorize.net. When your customers' payment methods are already vaulted in Shopify, you can change your primary gateway to the new payment provider.

Switching away from a secondary gateway

A secondary gateway, also known as the legacy subscription payment gateway, bills your existing subscription contracts through a third-party processor such as Stripe. Your customers' payment methods are held by that processor, outside of Shopify, and your subscription contracts use the gateway's payment tokens. This applies whichever payment provider is activated as your primary gateway.

When your secondary gateway is active, your customers' payment methods move to your primary gateway one at a time. A payment method moves when that customer updates their billing details, and it's vaulted in Shopify from then on. This gradual migration is the slow drip method, and how long it takes depends on when your customers update their billing details.

To deactivate your secondary gateway before all of its payment methods have moved, use Shopify Professional Services to migrate the ones it still holds into Shopify. Your store must be on the Shopify Plus or Enterprise plan for this migration. On other plans, keep your secondary gateway active until the last payment method has moved.

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.

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. Ask your subscription app developer to confirm whether the separate API import flow supports your existing PayPal account before planning a migration.

If you use 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.

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.

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 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 depend on whether you're migrating payment tokens or credit card data:

• To migrate payment tokens, work with your subscription app developer.
• To migrate credit card data, contact Shopify Support. Your store must be on the Shopify Plus or Enterprise plan.

Complete the following tasks in order to import your information into Shopify.

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.

As customers update their billing information, such as 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