E-shop and payment gateways for the self-employed 2026

For an e-shop as a self-employed person you handle two things: the platform you build the shop on and the payment gateway for accepting card payments. Both are available as a monthly service with no coding.

Shoptet — the most widespread Czech e-shop platform, rent from roughly 500 Kč/month, with templates and links to carriers and accounting. Upgates — a strong alternative focused on multilingual and B2B sales. Choose by the number of products, languages and integrations you need.

Comgate and GoPay are the most common Czech payment gateways — they accept card payments, Apple/Google Pay and bank transfers. You typically pay a small percentage per transaction, and the gateway connects to Shoptet and Upgates in a few clicks. Note: payments from abroad and from EU companies may trigger VAT obligations — see VAT and the identified person.

The electronic registration of sales (EET) was abolished as of 1 January 2023 (Act No. 458/2022 Coll.) — so as an e-shop you don't have to register your sales. The Ministry of Finance has submitted a proposal for a modernised EET 2.0 with a planned effective date of 1 January 2027, expected to also cover card and QR-code payments; the legislation is still under discussion, so check the current status with the Tax Administration. As a seller to consumers, though, you must comply with consumer protection law — a buyer has the right to withdraw from the contract within 14 days of receiving the goods without giving a reason (§ 1829 of the Civil Code), and your e-shop must display visible terms and conditions and a complaints procedure. If your annual turnover exceeds 2,000,000 Kč, you become liable for VAT — see the VAT for the self-employed page for details.

Selling goods to consumers in other EU countries follows the distance selling rule: as long as your combined sales of goods to consumers across all other EU countries (excluding the Czech Republic) stay under EUR 10,000 per calendar year, the place of supply remains in the Czech Republic. Once you cross that threshold (§ 8 of the VAT Act), the place of supply shifts to the customer's country — you then account for VAT there either through the simplified OSS (One Stop Shop) regime, a voluntary alternative to registering separately in each country, or by registering for VAT directly in that country.

Selling to a business with a valid VAT ID in another EU country follows different rules than selling to consumers — the identified-person mechanism (§ 6g–§ 6l of the VAT Act) is triggered by buying cross-border services (e.g. advertising on Google or Meta) or acquiring goods from the EU, not by selling goods to a business. We explain the whole mechanism in detail on the VAT for the self-employed 2026 page — for cross-border sales, it's worth consulting an accountant in any case.