Buy now, pay later by market: Afterpay, Zip, Klarna and Shop Pay Installments

Which BNPL provider can my store actually turn on?

The question most teams start with is which provider customers prefer. The question that decides the shortlist comes first: which providers will accept your store at all. Every provider here ties eligibility to your business location, your store address or your selling currency, and those are Markets and payments settings rather than checkout design.

That is why we treat this as part of international commerce and not as an app install. The right order is eligibility, then the buyer's expectation, then the commercial case.

We are not quoting adoption or market-share figures for any provider in any country. The numbers that circulate are mostly the providers' own, restated without the original scope, and the eligibility rules below are enough to decide on. If you want a defensible number, use your own analytics: checkout completion and average order value in one market, before and after.

How does Shop Pay Installments work, and who can use it?

Shopify's own option is the simplest to reason about, because it is not a separate integration. Shopify's Shop Pay Installments page says it is available for "eligible online stores in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom", and for retail locations in the United States only.

The requirements are specific. You need both Shopify Payments and Shop Pay activated. The eligibility page adds that a US store needs a US business entity (or Puerto Rico) with a US Shopify Payments account using USD for selling and payouts, and a UK store needs a UK entity with GBP selling and payout currencies.

Order value is gated too. Shopify lists $35 to $30,000 in the US and £50 to £30,000 in the UK, including discounts, shipping and taxes. A store whose typical basket sits below the minimum will never show the option on most orders, which is worth checking against your own order data before you build a campaign around it.

Two cautions from the same pages. Shopify's pages we read do not state what the merchant pays, so get the fee from your own Shopify admin or account manager before you model it. And the eligibility page notes that the underlying lender, Affirm, reviews stores against its prohibited business policy, with suspension possible for things like a password-protected storefront or a primary currency other than USD, CAD or GBP.

There is no Australian entry. If you sell in Australia, Shop Pay Installments is not the answer.

How do Afterpay and Clearpay differ by market?

Afterpay is the name most Australian and US merchants search for, and the UK product is Clearpay. Afterpay's Shopify getting-started guide lists the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK as supported, with the UK covered by a separate Clearpay guide. It also says "The store address must correspond to the Afterpay account region", and lists USD, AUD, NZD and CAD as the currencies.

In practice that means a UK or Australian brand cannot add Afterpay to a US-facing market by switching on a toggle in one store. The account, the address and the currency have to line up with the region. The same guide also says Afterpay US and Cash App Pay are only available in the USA.

Setup is an app, not a native Shopify method. The guide walks through checking the store address and currency in Settings > General and confirming payment capture is automatic at checkout or on fulfillment. We did not find these providers on the Shopify pages we checked for local payment methods or third-party providers, so treat Afterpay as an additional gateway and check the cost of that separately. Our payment methods by market post covers the third-party transaction fee question.

We did not fetch Clearpay's UK guide, so we make no specific claims about its steps. Read it before you scope a UK launch.

Is Zip worth adding for Australia?

Zip matters mainly in Australia. Zip's install guide for Australian Shopify stores says "we have individual versions of our gateway that serve each country it is supported in", and the Australian app is a separate listing on the Shopify App Store. Setup uses a public and a private key from the Zip Merchant Dashboard, then an activation step, and the guide asks you to enable on-site messaging afterward.

The point for a multi-market store is the separate build. Zip in Australia is one install; Zip somewhere else is another listing, another set of keys and another configuration. If you only have a few orders a month in a market, that is a poor trade.

Our take: Australia is the market where it is hardest to justify offering one provider only, because shoppers there are used to choosing between several. If you add a second, add it for the market with the volume, and measure it by market rather than store-wide.

Where does Klarna fit?

Klarna is the one in this list that Shopify treats as a Shopify Payments local method. Shopify's local payment methods page lists it under flexible payment options as "available to customers across a range of European countries", with pay now, invoice or installments. It does not name the countries or the currencies in the part we read, so check your own admin for what your market offers.

The same page says you must deactivate conflicting additional payment gateways before you can activate local payment methods. That matters if you already run a third-party BNPL gateway and are planning to add Klarna.

For a store whose markets are the US, UK and Australia, Klarna is not the first thing to configure. It earns its place when Europe is part of the plan, and the right way to scope that is the same eligibility-first process as above. See also our post on Shop Pay and express checkout, since BNPL and express wallets compete for the same moment in checkout.

What changed in UK and Australian BNPL rules?

Both markets now regulate BNPL as credit, and a merchant should know the shape of it even though the lender carries the obligation.

Australia. From 10 June 2025, BNPL contracts are regulated as credit under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act, so providers need an Australian credit licence. We could not load ASIC's own page in this run, so this comes from secondary reporting, Finance Magnates; confirm it with ASIC before you rely on it.

United Kingdom. The FCA says it "started regulating Deferred Payment Credit, often known as Buy Now Pay Later, on 15 July 2026". It applies when the lender and the supplier are different businesses, covers interest-free credit repayable in 12 or fewer instalments over 12 months or less, and requires lenders to check affordability, give pre-agreement information and support customers in difficulty. Customers can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and Section 75 refunds may apply, as with a credit card.

What that means for a merchant: your checkout wording, refund handling and customer service scripts now sit next to a regulated product. Do not write promotional copy that describes the credit; leave that to the provider's own messaging components and check your refund process, because a returned order now also has to unwind an agreement with a lender. This is not legal advice.

What we would talk you out of

Adding every provider to every market. Each one is a reconciliation stream, a refund path and, for third-party gateways, a fee on orders it touches. Two options per market is enough for most stores.

Adding BNPL to lift a low-margin, low-basket catalog. If most of your orders fall below a provider's minimum, the option will rarely appear. Pull your order values first.

Treating one provider as a global default. The rules above are per region, per currency and in some cases per entity, so the setup you did for one market rarely carries to the next.

Questions this raises

Read next

• International commerce and Shopify Markets
• Payment methods by market and the conversion they unlock
• Shop Pay, express checkout and the conversion you are leaving