1. It is an express button, not the payment method
Look at where on the checkout the method appears.
Accelerated buttons — Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay, PayPal Express — sit in their own row near the top of checkout, a different surface from the method list below. This is the most common reason a hide rule looks broken. Full detail in express buttons still showing.
2. You are in the US or Canada, targeting credit cards, without Plus
Shopify ignores this rule and tells nobody
In the US and Canada, payment customizations on non-Plus plans are limited to non-credit-card methods. A rule targeting the credit card option saves, activates, shows as Active — and is discarded at checkout. There is no error anywhere.
Shopify’s own wording: operations that target restricted payment methods “will not take effect on the checkout.”
This catches out US and Canadian merchants constantly, because every other signal says the rule is working. Two things to check:
- Is your store based in the US or Canada? It is the store’s country that matters, not the customer’s.
- Is the rule targeting the credit card option? Alternative methods — COD, PayPal, Klarna, bank transfer, gateways — are unaffected and work normally.
If both are yes, the only fix is Shopify Plus. See Shopify limitations.
3. The customer checked out through Shop Pay
Inside Shop Pay, payment customizations do not apply to any method except the native gift card field. A customer going through Shop Pay does not get your payment rules at all.
Nothing to fix here — it is how Shopify scopes the API — but it explains reports of a hidden method appearing for some customers and not others.
4. The name does not match the checkout label
The rule matches on the method’s label. If the chip in your rule says COD and checkout says Cash on Delivery (COD), nothing matches and nothing hides.
Copy the label from your live checkout and paste it into the rule rather than retyping it.
5. The conditions are not passing for this cart
Temporarily remove all conditions. If the method disappears without them, the rule and method name are both fine and the problem is in the conditions — put them back one at a time.
Guest checkout catches people out
A rule conditioned on Customer is logged in, Customer tag, Customer total spent or Customer order count cannot pass for a guest — there is no customer record to read. Most checkout traffic on most stores is guests, so a rule like this can appear to do nothing at all.
6. Another rule is re-showing it
Keep a hidden method out of every other rule’s method list. Where two rules conflict, hiding wins — so a stubbornly visible method means the hide rule isn’t firing, pointing back to causes 4 and 5.
7. You are testing against a stale checkout
A checkout opened before the rule was activated keeps its original options. Empty the cart, rebuild it, and open checkout in a fresh tab.
Verify the fix
- Build a cart that should trigger the rule. Confirm the method is gone.
- Build one that should not. Confirm the method is still there.
Skipping the second check is how an over-broad rule reaches live traffic.