Shopify in Saudi Arabia: payment gateways, VAT, shipping and WhatsApp

Selling on Shopify in Saudi Arabia

Shopify works for businesses in Saudi Arabia: you can sign up, choose a plan and sell across the Kingdom and the Gulf. Shopify runs a Saudi website in Arabic, and it lists plan prices there in US dollars.

The market is growing and moving to digital payments. The US International Trade Administration’s Saudi eCommerce guide, published on May 19, 2026, cites McKinsey’s estimate that e-commerce is 10 percent of total retail sales in Saudi Arabia and is expected to grow to more than 25 percent by 2035. The main setup decisions for a Saudi store are the payment provider, whether and where to accept cash at the door, VAT registration, and the courier.

Shopify Saudi Arabia pricing and fees

Shopify’s Saudi pricing page lists four plans in US dollars and a transaction fee on orders paid through third-party providers. These are the figures it showed on October 20, 2026:

Because Shopify Payments isn’t available, every card or BNPL order in a Saudi store goes through a third-party provider and pays Shopify’s fee on top. On Basic, a SAR 500 card order costs SAR 10 in Shopify fees before the provider’s own charges. On monthly billing, Grow costs US$45 a month more than Basic and cuts the fee from 2% to 1%, so it pays for itself once third-party sales pass about US$4,500 a month. Orders paid in cash at the door don’t pay the fee: Shopify charges no third-party transaction fee on manual payment methods.

Payment gateways for Shopify in Saudi Arabia

Saudi stores accept online payments through third-party providers. Shopify’s payment providers page, filtered for Saudi Arabia on October 20, 2026, includes these regional options:

Tamara and Telr are listed only for Gulf countries (Telr also for Jordan), while Tabby, Tap Payments and Checkout.com are listed for many markets. When you compare providers, ask which local cards and wallets each one supports at checkout, what documents it needs from your company, its fee per transaction, and how fast it pays out in riyals.

Cash on delivery in a market moving to digital payments

Saudi Arabia is moving quickly away from cash, but paying at the door still has a place. The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) announced in April 2025 that electronic payments made up 79% of total retail payments in 2024, up from 70% in 2023, with 12.6 billion non-cash transactions in the year. Reducing reliance on cash is an objective of Saudi Vision 2030.

For a Shopify store, that means card and BNPL options come first, and cash on delivery becomes an option you manage with rules. A sensible setup:

• Offer it through Shopify’s built-in Cash on Delivery manual method, next to your card and BNPL options.
• Use a payment customization app to hide the cash option above an order value or for products with high refusal rates. Our guide to cash payments on Shopify explains what is native and what needs an app.
• Confirm every cash order on WhatsApp before booking the courier.
• Track the share of cash orders and refusals each month, and adjust your rules as customers move to cards.

VAT and e-invoicing basics for Saudi stores

Saudi Arabia charges VAT at a standard rate of 15%. ZATCA, the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority, sets these registration thresholds:

ZATCA also runs e-invoicing (Fatoora), which converts paper invoices and notes into an electronic process. It was rolled out in two phases, starting on December 4, 2021 and January 1, 2023. Check with ZATCA which requirements apply to your business and whether your invoicing for Shopify orders meets them. This is general information; for tax advice, speak to ZATCA or a tax adviser.

Shipping, couriers and the National Address

Saudi Arabia has a National Address system, and couriers can use it to find buyers. SPL, Saudi Arabia’s postal and logistics company, says more than 15 million customers are registered in the national address database, and its e-commerce service lets merchants locate buyers by National Address.

• SPL offers three last-mile options (doorstep, lockers and post offices) and collects payment at the door through POS devices, in cash or by payment link.
• SMSA Express publishes an official Shopify app for creating labels, fulfilling orders and tracking shipments.
• OTO Shipping Gateway connects Saudi stores to carriers including SPL, SMSA, Aramex and J&T Express, and lists cash collections with transfers up to twice a week.

Ask customers for their National Address or a precise location at checkout, and keep a phone number on every order. Whapi then sends WhatsApp shipping updates from the fulfillment and tracking data in your Shopify orders. It doesn’t connect to couriers directly; the couriers page explains how this works.

WhatsApp order confirmations and updates in Saudi Arabia

Whapi confirms new Saudi orders with an Arabic WhatsApp message that has Confirm and Cancel buttons, tags the Shopify order with the answer, and sends shipping updates once you fulfill. Messages go through Meta’s official WhatsApp Business API from your own number, and you pay Meta directly:

• Meta publishes a SAR rate card, so a Saudi business can be billed for WhatsApp in riyals if it chooses SAR when the account is created.
• Meta raised its Marketing rate for Saudi Arabia on October 1, 2026, to $0.0576, more than five times the Utility rate. Keep confirmations transactional so Meta categorizes them as Utility; our Utility vs Marketing guide explains the difference.
• The Utility list rate applies to the first 100,000 Utility messages a month to Saudi numbers.

Whapi costs $18.99 per month on Pro or $45 per month on Team, with a 7-day free trial and no markup on Meta’s fees. It also recovers abandoned checkouts, sends back in stock alerts and review requests, and runs WhatsApp campaigns. The order confirmation feature shows the full flow, and the template library has copy-ready messages to adapt into Gulf Arabic.

Launch checklist for a Shopify store in Saudi Arabia

• Check the plan price and third-party fee on Shopify’s Saudi pricing page.
• Apply to a card provider and a BNPL provider listed for Saudi Arabia.
• Decide where to offer payment at the door, and install a payment customization app if you need rules.
• Check your VAT registration status and e-invoicing obligations with ZATCA.
• Connect a courier or shipping app and collect a National Address or precise location on every order.
• Connect your WhatsApp number to Whapi, choose USD or SAR billing in Meta, and switch on order confirmations and shipping updates.