Expanding your Shopify store to international customers is exciting — but choosing how to do it is a big decision. Two common approaches are:

• Using Shopify Markets (sell globally from a single store)

• Creating Multiple Shopify Stores (a store per country or region)

Each method has its pros, challenges, and ideal use cases. Let’s break them down so you can choose the right path for your business.

What is Shopify Markets?

Shopify Markets is a built-in feature that helps you sell to different countries from one store.

You can:

• Show prices in local currency

• Translate your content

• Set local shipping and taxes

It’s great if you’re running everything under one company.

So Why Open Multiple Stores?

Shopify Markets is useful — but it doesn’t handle everything. It mainly helps with content and pricing. But it doesn’t work well when your business becomes more complex.

Here’s when one store becomes a problem:

• Different countries, different companies: If you have separate business entities (e.g. one in Malaysia, one in Singapore), you’ll need separate stores.

• Separate bank accounts: Shopify only supports one bank account per store. If you want Malaysian orders to go to a Malaysian account, and Singaporean orders to a Singaporean account — you need two stores.

• Local payment gateways & currency: Many regional gateways like iPay88 (Malaysia), PayNow (Singapore), or Razorpay (India) only work with local businesses and currencies. Even if international gateways are supported, currency conversion fees and settlement delays can eat into your profits.

Signs You Need Multiple Stores

You should consider opening a second (or third) store when:

• You’ve registered different companies in different countries

• You need to accept payments into local bank accounts

• You want to use region-specific payment methods

• Your product pricing, promotions, or inventory vary by country

• You want to fully localize each store (language, currency, design, support)

• You have regional teams managing operations independently

What If I’m on Shopify Plus?

Good news: Shopify Plus includes 9 free expansion stores. That means you can run one store per region without paying extra for each store.

You still need to set them up and manage them — but the platform gives you the flexibility to grow internationally the right way.

What’s the Right Setup for You?

If your business is still small and you just want to test international markets, one store with Shopify Markets is usually enough. But as soon as things get serious — multiple countries, multiple teams, or multiple bank accounts — you’ll quickly outgrow that setup.

Opening multiple stores may feel like a bigger step, but it gives you the structure to grow properly, without backend headaches.

Need help figuring out what fits your growth plan? I’m happy to walk you through it.