Does the order of payment methods at checkout affect conversion?

Yes. The first and preselected option anchors the decision, and shoppers rarely scroll past it. Stores that put their highest-converting method first, usually an express wallet for their audience, see measurably fewer payment-step abandonments than stores that list methods alphabetically or by processor default.

Should express checkout buttons come before or after the regular form?

For most Shopify stores, express first. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal let returning shoppers skip the form entirely, and burying them below the card fields defeats the point. Keep the full form available underneath for shoppers who prefer it, but let the fastest path be the first thing they see.

Payment method order at checkout: how the default option shapes conversion

The payment method a shopper sees first anchors the whole payment step. Most shoppers pick the first reasonable option and move on, which means the ordering of your payment methods is a conversion decision, not a cosmetic one. Put the highest-converting method for your audience first, preselect it, and keep the rest available without making them compete for attention.

The anchor effect at the payment step

By the time a shopper reaches payment, their decision energy is nearly spent. They have browsed, chosen, entered details, and now face one more choice. Behavioral data consistently shows that most shoppers select the first or preselected payment option without comparing the rest. That makes the top slot the most valuable position in checkout, and many stores waste it on whatever the processor listed first by default.

The practical consequence: if your audience converts best with Shop Pay and your checkout leads with manual card entry, you are adding friction to every transaction for no reason. The fix costs nothing to test and changes nothing about your actual payment mix. It just reorders the presentation.

Express first, form second

For most Shopify stores, express wallets belong above the card form. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal compress the payment step into one or two taps, and they carry the shopper's saved details, which eliminates the typo-driven failures that kill card transactions. Burying them below a long card form means many shoppers never scroll far enough to discover the faster path.

The objection is usually that express buttons look pushy or clutter the page. Tested against revenue, that concern rarely holds. Shoppers who prefer manual card entry scroll past the express options without complaint. Shoppers who wanted the fast path and found it convert at higher rates. The asymmetry favors express-first in nearly every A/B test we have seen.

Order the rest by evidence, not alphabet

Below the express options, order the remaining methods by how your shoppers actually pay. Pull the data: which methods complete, which get selected and then abandoned, which correlate with high-value orders. A store with a young mobile audience might rank Apple Pay, Shop Pay, then card. A store selling high-ticket items might find PayPal's buyer protection messaging converts better and deserves prominence.

Retire the methods nobody uses. Every additional option adds cognitive load and a little more doubt. If a payment method accounts for under one percent of completed orders, it is not expanding your market. It is slowing down the other ninety-nine percent.

The preselected default

Preselection matters as much as order. A preselected option removes one decision entirely, and for the shopper it reads as a recommendation: this is the normal way to pay here. Preselect the method with the highest completion rate for first-time buyers, since they are the shoppers most influenced by the default.

One caution: preselecting a method the shopper does not use can backfire if changing it is hard. Make the alternatives visible and one click away. The default should feel like a suggestion, not a trap.

What to test first

Start with the cheapest test: express-first versus form-first, run for two weeks or until you have a few hundred checkouts per variant. Then test the preselected default. Then test trimming the tail of unused methods. Each test isolates one variable, and together they usually add up to a meaningful lift at the payment step, which is the step where abandonment hurts most because the shopper was already committed.

Does the order of payment methods at checkout affect conversion?: Yes. The first and preselected option anchors the decision, and shoppers rarely scroll past it. Stores that put their highest-converting method first, usually an express wallet for their audience, see measurably fewer payment-step abandonments than stores that list methods alphabetically or by processor default.
Should express checkout buttons come before or after the regular form?: For most Shopify stores, express first. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal let returning shoppers skip the form entirely, and burying them below the card fields defeats the point. Keep the full form available underneath for shoppers who prefer it, but let the fastest path be the first thing they see.