Breaking Down Borders: How the right payments technology can open up global commerce

Global commerce is no longer the reserve of enterprise businesses. Today’s businesses – whether digitally native or omnichannel – are increasingly expanding into new regions, and in 2024 alone they tapped into the £873 billion in UK exports of goods and services. Driven by rising demand, faster fulfilment capabilities and consumer expectations, global access is becoming mainstream. But while the opportunities are vast, the operational realities are often anything but simple.

Expanding internationally has traditionally meant building multiple online storefronts, integrating new third-party systems, reconciling financials manually across entities and absorbing the cost of currency conversion fees. For businesses of any scale, this patchwork approach leads to a lot of complexity - which in turn limits growth. 

Shopify believes in giving businesses the superpower of technology to eliminate friction. That’s why, as part of our Summer ‘25 Edition, our semi-annual product release moment, we’re featuring two major additions to Shopify Payments: the ability to sell from multiple business entities globally from a single store and Multi-Currency Payouts available across UK, Europe and Australia. Together, these capabilities allow merchants to manage their global operations – and receive funds across multiple currencies – all from a single store admin.

With this product update, we are empowering millions of businesses to build a completely customised global experience for a borderless world. 

One store, many entities

For too long, the operational playbook for international expansion has relied on multiplying effort – creating one store per legal entity or market. That leads to duplicated product catalogues, price books, storefront content, reporting, apps and workflows. It makes operating the business incredibly complex, requiring a lot of effort to figure out what’s going on across their whole business. For businesses with small or no global teams, this technical complexity along with all the challenges of international tariffs and fulfillment keep global buyers out of their reach. 

Instead, focus needs to shift to a one-store, multi-entity structure – one that is centrally managed but allows for multiple business entities internationally. A multi-entity structure makes it easier to manage local compliance, tax and payments, and can free up teams’ time from managing system integrations or reconciling disparate reporting, to focus on growth.

The result is not just a cleaner backend – it’s an enhanced growth engine. Businesses no longer need to choose between operational simplicity and global reach. They can scale into new markets with less administrative overhead, reduced cost and full visibility.

Less friction, more flow

One of the most persistent frictions to international commerce is financial: how to manage money across regions. Offering local currency is the best practice for businesses to drive conversion, meaning customers don’t need to bust out a calculator to browse stores or get surprise foreign exchange fees from their banks. Offering a customer’s local currency while getting paid out in your local currency is the simplest solution, though it comes at a cost because the merchant needs to pay foreign exchange fees. Quite understandably, retailers that primarily focus on their domestic market may happily pay these foreign exchange fees – avoiding the complexity of acting as their own treasury to handle multiple currency payouts. 

However, as a brand scales its business abroad, or brings onboard new foreign suppliers, then the benefit of acting as its own treasury to save on conversion fees becomes a serious consideration. This is especially true in apparel, where returns can be up to 30% of purchases, these retailers feel the pressure of foreign exchange twice – once in their payout and again when the refund is issued.

A multi-currency payouts setup that manages everything centrally, minimizes foreign exchange where it makes sense for a brand to do so. Ultimately, what all businesses look for is control and simplicity where they need it. By having the ability to connect multiple local accounts and currencies, merchants gain control over how and where they get paid – ensuring cash flow alignment across their international footprint. This streamlines treasury operations, reduces costs and provides new agility in financial planning.

A unified platform is now a necessity

As commerce becomes more complex, so too does the importance of maintaining a single source of operational truth. Businesses operating in multiple markets, across both online and physical channels, can no longer afford siloed systems for payments, storefronts and entity management.

A single source of truth isn’t just about elegance – it delivers meaningful impact. Unified systems reduce errors, accelerate reporting and allow teams to make faster decisions with confidence. Instead of wrestling with fragmented tech stacks and reconciling inconsistent data, finance and ops teams can focus on value-driving work: scenario planning, pricing strategy, market expansion.

It is especially important for merchants who sell omnichannel and internationally to have one view of their business and customers. Whether a shopper is buying through a mobile app in Tokyo, a physical store in Berlin or even a social platform in New York, the backend must remain consistent – meaning taxes, payouts, entity attribution and reporting are all handled through the same system alongside storefronts, inventory and fulfilment. When everything speaks the same language, scale becomes simpler. And, if the backend is simplified, it’s easier to unify the storefront and the customer experience too.

The future of payments is unified and global

For commerce to be truly borderless, traditional barriers must be broken down – eliminating duplication, reducing costs and cutting wasted time. As more businesses strive towards a vision of true unified commerce with a holistic picture of their customers, having clear data with a single view can also better enable them to take advantage of future innovations and drivers of business growth, such as AI. 

Now is the moment for businesses to harness the power of a single system that runs global entities, localises payouts and reconciles at speed – enabling them to focus on what matters most: delivering great experiences, expanding their footprint and growing sustainably.