Payment icons are the small Visa, Mastercard, Amex, PayPal, Apple Pay and Shop Pay marks that tell a shopper their money will work here. They are one of the cheapest trust signals in ecommerce and one of the most confusingly documented on Shopify. This guide separates the two places they can live, the theme and the checkout, and shows how to add them to each.
Where Shopify shows payment icons automatically
Two places. Most themes have a footer setting that lists the payment methods enabled on your store, driven by the enabled_payment_types value your theme reads from Shopify. And inside checkout, the payment section shows the card brands and wallets accepted by the payment method the shopper selects. Both are automatic and both are correct, but neither is prominent, and neither appears where a hesitant shopper is looking: near the order total and the pay button.
Adding a We Accept row to your theme
In Online Store, then Themes, then Customize, open the footer section and turn on Show payment icons. If your theme lacks the setting, the community answer is to paste a Liquid loop over shop.enabled_payment_types into the footer. That works, but it means editing theme code that a future theme update can overwrite. Either way the row reflects what is enabled in Settings, then Payments, so if an icon is missing, check the payment provider is switched on first.
Adding payment icons inside checkout (Shopify Plus)
This is the part most guides skip because it was not possible before Checkout Extensibility. Checkout Ninja's Payment Icon block renders a We Accept row anywhere in checkout: above the order summary, between the shipping and payment sections, or directly above the Complete order button. You choose which brands and wallets to show, pick colour or monochrome, and set the size. Shopify's own Checkout Blocks app has a similar Shipping and Payment icons block; ours adds conditional visibility so you can show Klarna only in the countries where you offer it, or hide PayPal for B2B customers. It is one of several trust and social-proof blocks for Shopify checkout.
Which icons to show
Only the ones you accept, in the order shoppers expect: card brands first, then wallets, then buy-now-pay-later. Six to eight icons is the ceiling. If you accept fifteen methods, show the six most used and let the checkout payment selector handle the rest. A wall of icons reads as clutter and the individual marks become too small to recognise on a phone.
Monochrome or colour?
Colour icons are more recognisable; monochrome icons look more premium and fit a minimalist checkout. For a first-time visitor recognisability wins, so default to colour unless your brand is deliberately austere. If you go monochrome, keep the marks at least 24 pixels tall so the wordmarks stay legible.
Do payment icons actually lift conversion?
On their own, modestly. They work by removing a specific doubt: will my card work here, will I be able to use PayPal. The lift is larger for stores with international traffic, for stores selling to older demographics, and for stores whose brand is not yet known. Combined with a three-badge trust row they are part of the pattern that produced the +6% first-visit conversion lift in our badge test.
Common mistakes
Showing an icon for a method you do not accept in the shopper's country. Using a stale Amex or Mastercard logo from a free PNG pack. Placing the row at the very top of checkout where nobody is deciding anything yet. And uploading a JPEG with a white box behind it; if you are making your own strip, export a transparent PNG at two times the display size.
Summary: turn on the footer icons in your theme, and if you are on Plus, add a second row inside checkout where the decision happens. Ten minutes for both.