Shopify payments in EU - TradFi vs DeFi setup

Here is a story of my recent experience setting up Shopify payments. It compares setting up crypto vs credit card Shopify payments in the EU, specifically Croatia.

I set this up for one of my side-hustles at msmechanic.hr.

I have been a long-time crypto enthusiast, but I did not expect this level of complication with TradFi in the EU.

As a baseline, I have set up payments and Shopify stores for multiple US businesses from scratch. There the flow is straightforward:

• create a store
• choose Stripe or Shop Pay
• fill out a few online forms in Shopify
• done

1) Setting up DeFi payments

There are multiple options. For this case I chose Solana Pay via Helio.

Installing the payment gateway took a few clicks through either the Shopify app or Helio's provider interface.

After installation:

• create or connect a wallet
• complete a quick KYC/KYB flow powered by Persona (fully web-based)
• click activate channel in Shopify

That was it. Crypto payments were live on Solana.

Total setup time was under one hour, even as a first-time setup for this exact stack.

Helio also supports BTC, ETH, and POL, with optional automatic swaps into your preferred stablecoin.

2) Setting up traditional credit card payments

Now the hard part.

First step was choosing an IPG provider. I chose CorvusPay because it is well-known in Croatia.

Their onboarding was not self-serve. Instead of automated signup, the flow starts with a contact-us process. After reaching out, I received a wall-of-text email and had to manually interpret which forms to fill and where to find them.

Initial documents required:

• Request to set up an authorized internet point of sales
• PCI DSS SAQ 2

Next, no progress was possible without adding a full set of EU-compliance elements to the website:

• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Shipping and Returns policy
• full company data
• logos of accepted payment methods
• logo of the IPG provider
• descriptions of enabled payment methods

After a few days, once that was verified, Corvus reached out to PBZ Card (our selected card house) to set up their side.

PBZ then required five additional documents for manual submission:

• request to access online services
• questionnaire for the business partner
• contract to accept card transactions
• scan of LLC founding act
• scan of personal ID

After another few days, once PBZ and Corvus synchronized setup details, IPG access was finally approved.

Then I had to create a new point of sale in Corvus and connect it to Shopify.

There was no clear public online documentation for this step. I initially entered the Shopify business domain instead of the origin domain, had to contact support, and only then received a PDF explaining the setup specifics.

Support fixed the connection, I enabled the payment method in Shopify, and we were finally live.

27 days later.

Fees and cashflow reality

Helio:

• 0.75% transaction fee
• funds settle almost instantly

Corvus + PBZ:

• Corvus fee is 0.5% but with a 30 EUR minimum monthly fee
• unless monthly volume is above 6000 EUR, effective fee is higher than 0.5%
• PBZ adds around 1.5% to 3% depending on card and issuing bank

Conclusion

In this specific EU setup, TradFi had materially higher total transaction costs than DeFi, required significantly more paperwork, and took weeks instead of hours to launch.

EU needs to wake up and accelerate.

Update May 2026

Sometime in 2025 Shopify Payments finally became available in Croatia. We took the opportunity right away and switched to it.

The fees are significantly lower, they get detucted from our revenue and our store became interoperable with the Shop Pay, Google Pay and Apple Pay. IMO, going with Shopify Payments instead of a local provider is a no-brainer.