If your current store sells in multiple currencies, whether through Magento’s multistore setup, a WooCommerce multi-currency plugin, or a custom-built regional pricing system, the question that comes up almost immediately when you look at Shopify is: does Shopify actually handle this properly, or am I going to lose functionality I already rely on?
The honest answer is that Shopify handles multi-currency very differently to most of the platforms merchants migrate from, and that difference is almost entirely down to Shopify Markets. Understanding how Markets actually works, and where it’s genuinely different from a Magento-style multistore setup, is the difference between a smooth migration and a nasty surprise a few weeks post-launch.
The Core Shift: One Store, Not Multiple Storefronts
The biggest conceptual change for anyone coming from Magento multistore or a similar setup is this: Shopify Markets is built around a single store instance serving multiple regions and currencies, rather than separate storefront instances per region. Magento’s multi-website/multistore architecture, by contrast, often means genuinely separate storefronts (sometimes separate catalogues, separate content, separate checkout flows) tied together under one back end.
With Shopify Markets, you configure:
- Which countries/regions you sell into, grouped into “markets”
- Currency and (where supported) local-language presentment for each market
- Market-specific pricing, either automatic currency conversion or manually set local prices per market
- Region-specific domains or subfolders/subdomains if you want localised URLs (e.g. a
.com.auvs a/en-us/path structure) - Duties, taxes and compliance settings that vary by destination market
This is a genuinely different mental model. You’re not maintaining parallel stores, you’re maintaining one product catalogue and one admin, with market-level rules layered over the top.
What You Gain Moving to Shopify Markets
- Simpler catalogue management. One product catalogue to maintain instead of syncing inventory, pricing and content across separate storefronts.
- Native currency conversion, so you’re not relying on a third-party plugin to handle FX rates and rounding.
- Localised checkout, including local payment method availability by market where supported by your payment provider setup.
- Consolidated reporting, since all markets report into the same Shopify admin rather than needing to be aggregated from multiple systems.
What You Need to Check Before You Assume Feature Parity
This is the part migration guides sometimes gloss over. A few things genuinely work differently, and they’re worth confirming against your current setup before you commit to a launch date:
Manual vs automatic pricing per market. Shopify Markets lets you either let prices float with exchange rates, or fix specific local prices per market (useful if you want a clean $99 AUD / $79 USD rather than an odd converted number). If your current multi-currency setup relies on fixed regional pricing for margin reasons, confirm you’re setting this up as fixed local pricing, not automatic conversion, from day one.
Content localisation depth. Full multi-language content translation across markets is a bigger project than currency alone, it involves Shopify’s translation tooling and, often, third-party apps depending on how much content needs translating. Don’t assume currency setup and content localisation are the same task; they’re separate workstreams with separate timelines.
Tax and duty complexity at the border. If your current system has custom logic for duties, customs thresholds, or destination-specific tax rules, this needs to be re-mapped into Shopify Markets’ settings (or supporting apps) rather than assumed to carry over automatically. Get this wrong and it shows up as either compliance risk or checkout abandonment from unexpected charges.
Domain and URL strategy. Deciding between region-specific top-level domains, subdomains, or subfolder structures affects both SEO and how cleanly Markets can manage redirects, this is a decision to make before migration, not adjust afterward, since restructuring URLs post-launch carries its own SEO risk.
Data migration for existing multi-currency order history. Historical order data in your old system won’t automatically reconcile against Shopify’s Markets structure, plan for how (and whether) you need historical multi-currency order records accessible post-migration, separate from your live catalogue.
An Illustrative Example: Magento Multistore to Shopify Markets
To make this concrete, imagine a homewares brand running Magento with three separate storefronts, one for Australia in AUD, one for the UK in GBP, and one for the US in USD, each with its own catalogue view, its own promotional calendar, and its own checkout configuration maintained somewhat independently by different team members.
Moving this to Shopify Markets doesn’t mean recreating three separate stores inside Shopify. It means restructuring around one product catalogue with three markets layered over it: AU, UK and US, each with its own currency, and potentially its own fixed local pricing rather than a converted rate. Promotions that previously needed to be built three times, once per Magento storefront, can often be configured once and targeted by market instead, though this depends on exactly which promotion mechanics you’re using, since not every discount type has identical market-level targeting in Shopify.
The team also needs to decide what happens to region-specific content that genuinely differed across the old storefronts, if the UK storefront had different product copy or imagery for regulatory or cultural reasons, that content difference needs a deliberate home in the new structure (via market-specific content overrides), not an assumption that it will simply carry over unchanged.
This kind of restructuring is exactly why multi-currency migrations benefit from being scoped as their own workstream, with their own timeline, rather than folded into a generic “we’re moving to Shopify” project plan.
A Practical Sequence for the Migration
- Map your current markets and currencies to how they’ll be structured as Shopify Markets, don’t assume a 1:1 mapping, since Shopify groups by market rather than by storefront instance.
- Decide fixed vs automatic pricing per market based on your margin strategy, not just what’s fastest to configure.
- Confirm payment gateway support for each currency and region you’re launching into, not every payment provider supports every currency Shopify itself supports.
- Plan URL/domain structure for each market before build starts.
- Migrate and test tax/duty rules market by market, not as a single global setting.
- Run a full checkout test in every currency and region before launch, this is the step that catches configuration errors that don’t show up just from browsing the storefront.
- Reconcile historical order/currency data separately from the live catalogue migration.
Common Questions From Merchants Coming Off Magento or WooCommerce
“Do we lose the ability to set completely different promotions per region?” Not entirely, but the mechanics differ. Some discount types in Shopify support market-level targeting natively; more complex or highly custom promotional logic per region may need additional configuration or a Shopify Function, particularly on more advanced or Plus-tier setups. This is worth testing against your specific promotional patterns before assuming full parity.
“Can different regions see different products?” Yes, Shopify Markets supports controlling product availability by market, so you’re not forced to show your entire catalogue everywhere. This is a genuinely useful feature for merchants with region-specific regulatory restrictions or products that only make commercial sense in certain markets.
“What happens to our existing multi-currency payment gateway relationships?” This needs to be checked market by market. Not every payment gateway supports every currency and region combination Shopify itself supports, so gateway compatibility should be confirmed early in migration planning, not assumed to just carry over from your old setup.
“Will our regional teams still have the level of control they’re used to?” This depends on how your admin access and permissions are configured. Shopify supports staff account permissions that can be scoped, but if your current setup relies on genuinely separate storefront-level admin access per region, that’s a structural difference worth discussing directly with whoever is planning your migration.
This Is a Genuinely Different Build to a Single-Currency Migration
If your Shopify migration conversations so far have mostly focused on product and content migration, multi-currency adds a real layer of additional planning, pricing strategy, tax logic and checkout testing per market all need their own attention. It’s a reasonable moment to bring in specialists who’ve actually configured Markets for a multi-region catalogue before, rather than treating it as a checkbox during a standard migration. This crosses into the kind of work Nexly does for merchants selling across borders, see our international ecommerce work for how we typically structure this.
FAQ
Does Shopify Markets replace the need for separate country-specific stores?
For most merchants, yes, Markets is specifically designed to let one Shopify store serve multiple currencies, languages and regions, which is what previously required separate storefronts on platforms like Magento. Some enterprise merchants with very distinct regional catalogues or brand experiences still opt for separate stores, but that’s the exception, not the default.
Can I set fixed prices per currency instead of relying on exchange rate conversion?
Yes. Shopify Markets supports manually set local pricing per market, which is common for merchants who want clean, deliberately chosen price points rather than a live-converted number that changes with FX rates.
Will my current multi-currency order history migrate automatically to Shopify?
No, historical orders in your old platform don’t automatically map into Shopify Markets’ structure. This needs to be planned as a separate data migration or reporting decision, not assumed to carry over with the rest of the migration.
Do I need separate domains for each market in Shopify Markets?
No, it’s optional. Markets supports region-specific domains, subdomains, or subfolders depending on your SEO and branding preferences, this is a strategic choice to make early, not a technical requirement.
Is Shopify Markets available on all Shopify plans?
Markets functionality has expanded over Shopify’s plan tiers over time, with the most advanced controls generally associated with Shopify Plus. Check current plan-specific capability directly against your requirements rather than assuming full functionality is available on every tier.
Planning a multi-currency migration to Shopify?
Multi-currency migrations have more moving parts than a standard replatform, and it’s worth getting the market structure right before build starts rather than after. Book a call with Nexly to talk through your current setup and what changes with Shopify Markets.
