How Does Trustap Compare to Shopify Payments? A Full Cost and Feature Breakdown

If you've ever compared payment providers by looking at one number, the headline transaction rate, you've only seen part of the picture. That number was never the full cost of accepting a card payment. It's just the sticker price.

This is a straight, practical comparison of Trustap Checkout against Shopify Payments: what each actually costs once every fee is accounted for, what features are built in versus bolted on, and what changes (or doesn't) if you switch.

The Real Comparison Isn't Rate vs Rate

Most merchants assume their payment processing cost is whatever percentage is quoted at sign-up. In reality, that quoted rate is just one input. The number that actually hits your P&L, what we call Actual Transaction Cost (ATC), is made up of several layers stacked on top:

• Sticker price – the flat rate you were quoted
• Interchange & scheme fees – paid to the cardholder's bank and networks like Visa or Mastercard
• Unrecovered return costs – gateway, processing, and fraud fees that were charged on the original sale and don't get refunded when the order comes back
• FX & cross-border surcharges – extra costs on international or non-local currency orders
• Separate tool subscriptions – for fraud detection and chargeback management, if these aren't already included

Shopify Payments and Trustap Checkout both sit underneath this same equation. The difference is how transparently each one handles it.

Cost & Feature Breakdown

A note on precision: exact Shopify Payments rates vary by plan, region, and currency, so check Shopify's current pricing for the specific numbers on your store. What doesn't vary is the structure, several separate cost components rather than one line you can plan around.

What Stays Exactly the Same When You Use Trustap Checkout

Switching your card payment option is a smaller change than it sounds:

• Express checkout is untouched. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Klarna carry on exactly as they are.
• Payouts stay fast. No escrow-style holds, no waiting on your cash flow.
• No lock-in. There's no contract to negotiate out of. Trustap can be switched on or off directly from your Shopify dashboard.

Trustap only replaces your standard card payment option, so the rest of your checkout, and your customer's experience, doesn't change.

What About the Extra Step at Checkout?

A fair question merchants ask: does adding a payment step cost conversions? The data says no. Trustap's ecommerce merchants currently see an average checkout conversion rate of 72% year to date, well above industry benchmarks. A short, secure payment step (the same pattern used by PayPal and other established third-party options) doesn't meaningfully affect completion rates.

What actually drives cart abandonment is unexpected costs, revealed late (40% of drop-offs), unclear delivery timelines, and forced account creation, not one extra click in a smooth, transparent flow.

What It Means for Your Margin

Every percentage point saved on transaction fees drops straight to your bottom line as pure profit. It's not revenue you have to spend to acquire, it's margin you're already earning back. And because fees compound with volume, the savings scale as your GMV grows: the bigger your store gets, the more a fragmented fee structure costs you, and the more a single flat fee saves you.

So, which should I choose?

Shopify Payments and Trustap Checkout can look similar on the surface, both process cards, both plug into your existing store. The difference shows up in the total: Trustap  bundles interchange, FX, fraud prevention, and chargeback handling into fees you have to track separately; the other bundles them into one flat, predictable rate while keeping the experience your customers expect and the quick payouts you need

If you haven't checked what your actual transaction cost looks like once every layer is added up, that's usually where the biggest number is hiding.

To learn more, get in touch with our team today here

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