Starting an Online Store in Spain: Platform, Payments, Tax and Shipping

To build an e-commerce site that sells in Spain, you need to get five things right from the start: a platform that fits your business (Shopify or WooCommerce for most), the payment methods Spanish customers are used to (card, Bizum, PayPal), the correct IVA setup, a reliable shipping and returns process, and complete legal pages. Putting money into ads before these are in place is like filling a leaky bucket. Below I walk you through these steps in the order I've seen them play out in practice.

As someone with companies in Türkiye, Spain and the USA, here's what I see most often in store projects in Spain: the product is good, the site looks great, but there's no Bizum at checkout, the return policy is translated from Turkish, and delivery times are vague. So the customer abandons the cart and leaves.

Choosing a platform: Shopify or WooCommerce?

Both are widely used in the Spanish market, and you can build a solid store with either. The difference comes down to your team and your growth plans.

I generally recommend Shopify to businesses without their own tech team that want to launch quickly. If you need custom pricing, a B2B ordering flow, or integration with an inventory or accounting system, WooCommerce or custom development may make more sense. If you'd like to make this decision together, I explain how I work on my web design in Spain and software development in Spain pages.

Whatever the platform, the store should be in Spanish. If most of your sales are in Catalonia, a Catalan version is worth considering too. Product descriptions left in machine translation kill trust instantly.

How do Spanish customers want to pay?

Checkout is one of the places that affects conversion the most in Spain. At a minimum, I recommend offering:

• Debit and credit cards: Visa and Mastercard are the basics. Because of strong customer authentication (3D Secure) in Europe, your payment setup needs to support it without issues.
• Bizum: The shared mobile payment system of Spanish banks. Bizum's official website states that it can also be used to pay in online stores: the customer chooses "Pagar con Bizum", enters their phone number and approves the payment in their banking app. On the store side, integration is usually done through your bank's virtual POS (TPV virtual) or a payment provider that supports Bizum.
• PayPal: Gives customers confidence, especially with unfamiliar stores they're buying from for the first time.
• Apple Pay and Google Pay: Shorten the payment step for mobile traffic.

On Shopify, Bizum support depends on the payment provider you use. Before setup, get written confirmation that your provider actually enables Bizum in Spain.

IVA: which rate will you apply?

According to the Agencia Tributaria's official page, the standard IVA rate in Spain is 21%. The reduced rates are 10% and 4%, and a 0% rate applies to some transactions. Most of your products will probably fall under the standard rate, but categories like food, books and some health products may qualify for reduced rates. Don't guess on your own which product falls under which rate.

A few important notes:

• The Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla are outside the IVA territory; tax and customs rules work differently for shipments there. Set these regions up separately in your store settings.
• Prices you show to consumers in Spain must include IVA.
• Invoicing, record-keeping and filing obligations depend on your company structure.

Selling from another EU country: OSS

If your company is in another EU country and you ship products to consumers in Spain, the rule on the European Commission's OSS (One Stop Shop) page matters. If your total intra-EU distance sales plus certain cross-border electronic services don't exceed 10,000 euros excluding VAT in the current and previous calendar year, you can apply your own country's VAT. Once that threshold is exceeded, the customer's country VAT applies. The part of OSS called the Union scheme lets you report these sales from your own country in a single return instead of registering in each country separately.

OSS doesn't cover business-to-business (B2B) sales. Nor does it remove the obligation to register locally in countries where you hold stock. If you sell from outside the EU, other topics come into play, such as imports, customs and IOSS.

The information in this section is a general overview. Be sure to check your own situation with a gestoría or tax advisor.

Shipping carriers and delivery expectations

Commonly used carriers in Spain include Correos, SEUR, MRW and GLS. Besides price, look at:

• Do they ship to the islands (Balearic and Canary), and what's the surcharge?
• Is there a pickup point or parcel locker option? That's a big convenience for customers who aren't home during the day.
• Does the tracking number flow into your store system automatically?
• Can you create return labels easily?

State the estimated delivery time clearly on the product page and at checkout. A range like "3 to 5 business days" beats uncertainty.

Returns and the 14-day withdrawal right

Under EU consumer rules, customers buying online can withdraw from the contract within 14 days without giving a reason. According to the European Union's Your Europe page, for physical goods this period starts on the delivery date. In Spain this right is governed by consumer protection law (Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2007), and there are exceptions for some product types.

What you need to do in practice:

1. Explain the withdrawal right and the return process in Spanish on a clear page.
2. State who pays return shipping before the sale. If you don't say so upfront, you may end up covering the cost.
3. Keep a model withdrawal form on your site.
4. Rehearse the return process with your customer service team. Panicking at the first return request loses you the customer.

Don't leave out the legal pages

An aviso legal, privacy policy, cookie policy and cookie consent banner, terms of sale (condiciones generales de contratación) and a return policy are must-haves for a store in Spain. I explain which page is required and why in a separate post, Legal requirements for websites in Spain. Have the texts checked by a lawyer or gestoría; copying another site's texts is risky and usually doesn't fit your business anyway.

Think of Amazon.es as a complementary channel

Amazon.es is one of the main destinations for online shopping in Spain. When you build your own site, it makes sense to see Amazon not as a competitor but as an additional channel. Amazon gives you ready-made traffic and trust; your own site lets you keep customer data, the brand experience and your profit margin. My advice is often this: gain visibility on Amazon with a few best-selling products, and set up a system that steers loyal customers to your own site. Since I also work with Amazon Ads, I can tell you this: advertising on Amazon doesn't pay off until your product page and reviews are ready.

Google Shopping, Meta and SEO to get sales going

Once the store is ready, you need to bring in traffic. These are the first channels I look at for e-commerce in Spain:

• Google Shopping: Connect your product feed to Merchant Center and show your products in search results with images and prices. This is high purchase-intent traffic. For setup details, see the Google Ads guide for Spain.
• Meta (Instagram and Facebook): Strong for launching new products and retargeting cart abandoners. The catalog connection and conversion tracking need to be set up correctly.
• SEO: Category and product pages built around Spanish keywords bring in ad-free traffic over time.
• Email: The cheapest way to bring a customer back after their first purchase, with their consent, of course.

Before you start advertising, test that conversion tracking (GA4, Google Ads and the Meta pixel, in line with cookie consent) is working. You can't optimize a campaign you can't measure. If you'd like to outsource campaign setup and management, take a look at my advertising management in Spain page.

Common mistakes I see

• Offering only card payment at checkout.
• Springing the shipping cost as a surprise at the last step.
• Leaving Turkish or English texts in machine translation.
• Putting off the IVA setup with "we'll deal with it later".
• Starting ads before conversion tracking and the return process are ready.

The tax and legal information in this post is for general guidance only. Before opening your store, check your own situation with a gestoría or lawyer; on the technical and marketing side, I'd be happy to help.