Shopify Payments vs Pensopay: what the difference is really about
When Danish brands ask about Shopify Payments vs Pensopay, the question is rarely just about which gateway looks technically cleaner. It comes down to fees, to which payment methods your customers actually use, and to how robust your checkout is when traffic peaks. Both solutions can accept Dankort, Visa, Mastercard and MobilePay on a Shopify store, but they are built differently, and the choice affects both your bottom line and your day to day operations.
In short, Shopify Payments is the built in solution stitched directly into Shopify's checkout. Pensopay is a Danish third party payment gateway that you integrate on top of Shopify. The most important consequence of that choice is that Shopify charges an extra transaction fee when you use an external gateway instead of Shopify Payments. That fee is typically 2 percent and sits on top of what your external provider already takes.
Fees: when each solution pays off
There is no single answer that fits everyone. The picture depends on your payment mix. On Dankort heavy stores, Pensopay can often come out cheapest, even when you count Shopify's extra third party fee, because Danish gateways price Dankort competitively. Conversely, Shopify Payments typically becomes the most favorable option when a large share of your revenue comes through international cards and MobilePay, where you avoid the extra 2 percent fee entirely.
Our recommendation is to run the numbers on your own actual distribution rather than reading a single price sheet. Pull a couple of months of transactions, split them across Dankort, international cards and MobilePay, and add the real rates plus any Shopify fee on top. For many Danish web shops, the difference between the two solutions on total fees is marginal, and in that case operational reliability and the checkout experience should weigh more heavily than a few basis points.
Operational reliability and checkout experience
An argument that is often overlooked is stability under peak load. Some Danish gateways have historically been strained during Black Friday and other major sales days, where traffic multiplies. Shopify Payments runs on the same infrastructure as the rest of checkout, which means fewer links that can fail and a smoother payment. Fewer steps and fewer redirects usually mean a higher completion rate.
In return, Pensopay gives you a Danish contractual partner, Danish support and flexibility in how you compose your payment methods. For some B2B brands or companies with specific requirements for settlement and bookkeeping, that flexibility can be worth paying for. At Mercive, we always assess both sides together: what it costs, what it can withstand, and what it does to conversion. If you want to dig into the setup itself, we have a detailed walkthrough in our guide to Shopify Payments and MobilePay in Denmark.
Shop Pay and Shopify Payments are not the same thing
A frequent source of confusion is the difference between Shop Pay and Shopify Payments. Shopify Payments is the payment engine itself, which processes the transaction and settles the money to you. Shop Pay is an accelerated checkout button that saves the customer's details so repeat purchases can be completed in a few clicks. Shop Pay builds on top of Shopify Payments and is therefore an experience, not a standalone gateway.
This is relevant to the comparison because Shop Pay is only available when you run Shopify Payments. If you choose an external gateway like Pensopay as your primary solution, you also give up Shop Pay's fast checkout for the customers who have it. For brands with many returning customers, that conversion gain can be a real factor in the equation.
How Mercive would approach the choice
We always start with data, not a product name. First we map your payment distribution and your real fees across methods. Then we hold the total price up against operational reliability, the checkout flow and the specific requirements your business has for settlement and bookkeeping. For some clients we end up with a pure Shopify Payments setup, for others we combine it with an external solution.