Shopify gives payment methods a new look in checkout

On October 22, Shopify announced on its Changelog a tiled layout, which it describes as cleaner and easier to scan at a glance. The tiles appear when payment methods meet certain display criteria, including the store offering 4 or fewer methods. Other setups keep the list view.

In other words, the number of payment methods you have turned on now helps decide what your checkout looks like.

The number 4 alone won't tell you whether your store switches

Beyond the summary line, the body of the announcement is just two sentences, and both cover when the tiled layout shows up. The word "including" signals that the 4-method cap is one criterion, not the only one. So a store with just 3 methods enabled could still keep seeing the list.

Besides the remaining criteria, the announcement also leaves open:

• Which plans and markets the change covers
• How "payment methods" are counted, for example whether cards, wallets and express checkout buttons count together
• Whether merchants can choose or turn off the tiled layout

Walk through to the payment step on your own store

The surest way to know which layout your checkout shows is to go through it as a buyer would. Add a product to the cart, move on to the payment step, and see whether the method picker shows tiles or a list.

Do it on both desktop and mobile, since your customers meet checkout on both.

While you're there, check that every method you enabled shows up, and shows up correctly. If you run several stores, start with the ones that offer few payment methods, since they're the likelier ones to switch.

Review your methods, but don't cut any just to get the new look

If recent orders show a method almost nobody uses, it's fair to ask why you still keep it. Still, don't drop methods just to push checkout into tiles, because 4 is only one criterion. Shopify says the new layout makes the options clearer, but it shares no data showing it gets more customers to pay.

A rarely used method may still be the only way a certain group of customers is willing to pay.

Ask Sidekick right inside the checkout editor

If you're unsure where a setting lives, you don't have to dig through documentation yourself. On October 13, ahead of this layout change, Shopify brought Sidekick into the checkout and customer accounts editor on desktop. You can ask Sidekick how to configure checkout, get app suggestions for what you need, or have it search the Shopify Help Center for you.

Stores customizing checkout with the Checkout Blocks app can also ask Sidekick to explain how payment functions work and to review what's been configured, along with the reasoning. That's worth a close look, because the tiled layout announcement doesn't say whether customizations like these affect how methods are displayed.