Since Brexit, an EU customer buying from a UK store can meet three things that a domestic customer never sees: an unfamiliar currency, an unexpected customs charge at the door, and a checkout without their normal payment method. Each one costs conversions, and all three are fixable in Shopify Markets.
Start with IOSS, not with the storefront
For consignments under €150, the Import One-Stop Shop lets you charge EU VAT at checkout and remit it through a single return, so the parcel clears without the customer being asked for anything. Without IOSS the carrier collects VAT plus a handling fee at delivery — typically €10–€20 on top — and that is where refusals and chargebacks come from.
You register in one member state, either directly or through an intermediary, and you charge the destination country's VAT rate. Shopify handles the rate table once the market is configured; the registration itself is your accountant's job, not a setting in the admin.
Above €150, IOSS does not apply. You are choosing between DDP — you pay duty and VAT, the customer sees one price — and DAP, where the carrier bills them on arrival. For consumer brands DDP is almost always the right call, and Shopify's duties-at-checkout can calculate it if you have HS codes and country of origin on your products.
Currency is a conversion decision, not a preference
Shopify Markets lets you sell in EUR while settling in GBP. Use it. A German customer seeing £49.00 has to do arithmetic and absorb an unknown FX spread from their card issuer; the same product at €57.00 is just a price.
Set price rounding per market so converted prices do not land on €57.13. Rounding to .00 or .95 is worth more than the few pence it costs. Where a market can bear a different margin, override prices per market rather than letting the FX rate decide your positioning.
Payment methods decide the checkout
Cards dominate the UK. They do not dominate the EU. In the Netherlands, iDEAL is the default and a checkout without it reads as broken. In Germany, invoice and direct debit through Klarna carry a large share of consumer spend. Poland runs on BLIK, Belgium on Bancontact.
These are payment methods in Shopify Payments, enabled per market. Turning them on is a checkbox; knowing which ones matter for which country is the part that needs doing before you launch, not after the first month of weak conversion.
Domains, language and hreflang
Shopify Markets can serve each market on a subfolder, a subdomain or a separate domain. Subfolders concentrate authority on your main domain and are the right default unless you have a strong local-brand reason to split.
Whichever you choose, check the hreflang tags Shopify generates. They need to be reciprocal, they need an x-default, and they need to point at the market URL that actually resolves. Getting this wrong produces the classic symptom of a German customer landing on the UK page and seeing GBP.
A launch order that works
Register for IOSS. Add HS codes and country of origin to your catalogue. Create the markets with local currency and rounding. Enable the country payment methods. Set shipping profiles and carrier rates per market. Then check the hreflang output and place a real test order into each country before announcing anything.