Cart Drawer: Express Checkout Buttons Not Showing (Accelerated Checkout)
This article explains why the express payment buttons — Shop Pay, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay — can be missing from the cart drawer even when Accelerated checkout is turned on in the app, and the four checks that fix it. The last one is a one-line theme snippet for themes that never load Shopify's wallet code.
How the express buttons reach the drawer
The express buttons belong to Shopify, not to the app. Shopify only loads its wallet code on a page when your theme outputs the accelerated-checkout content somewhere on that page. The cart drawer reserves the space for the buttons in its footer and fills it with what Shopify loads.
So there are two separate things that can go wrong: Shopify never loaded the wallet code on the page, or Shopify loaded it and decided no wallet is eligible for that customer.
The app decides whether the express area is shown and how tall the buttons are. It does not decide which wallets appear, and it cannot force a wallet to appear.
Quick diagnosis
| What you see in the drawer | Most likely cause |
|---|---|
| An empty gap where the buttons should be — the space is reserved but nothing loads | Shopify's wallet code isn't loading on the page. Check 3, then Check 4 — Check 4 is the usual answer if your theme has no accelerated-checkout setting. |
| No express area at all | Accelerated checkout is off in the app. Check 1. |
| Some buttons show, but not the one you expect | Wallet eligibility. See Which buttons appear is Shopify's decision below. |
Check 1 — Accelerated checkout is enabled in the app
Open Essential Cart Drawer and make sure Accelerated checkout is turned on for the drawer footer. With it off, the drawer renders no express area at all.
Check 2 — The wallets are active in your Shopify payment settings
Go to Shopify admin → Settings → Payments and confirm the express methods you want are activated — Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal. Only wallets activated here can ever appear in the drawer.
Check 3 — The theme's "additional checkout buttons" setting
- Go to Online Store → Themes → Customize.
- Open your Cart page or cart settings and turn on Enable additional checkout buttons. The label and location vary by theme — in some themes it sits under Theme settings → Cart → Accelerated checkout buttons.
- Save, reload your storefront, and open the cart drawer.
If you can find this setting, turning it on is usually all it takes. Plenty of themes don't have it at all — if you can't find it anywhere in Customize, go straight to Check 4. Also go to Check 4 if the setting is on and the buttons still don't load.
Check 4 — No theme setting? Add one line to theme.liquid
This is the simplest fix when there's no way to switch the buttons on from the theme — the setting in Check 3 doesn't exist in your theme, or you can't find it. It also applies when that setting is on and the express area is still empty.
The reason: most themes output the accelerated-checkout content only inside their own cart template, and some don't output it at all. When your store uses the drawer instead of the cart page, the customer never loads that template — so Shopify's wallet code never loads, and the drawer has nothing to render into the space it reserved. Outputting it once in the theme layout fixes that for every page.
- Go to Online Store → Themes → ⋯ → Edit code.
- Open layout/theme.liquid.
- Find the opening
<body>tag — hit Ctrl/⌘ + F and search for body. - Paste the line below on a blank line just after the first
<body>tag. - Save, then reload your storefront and open the drawer.
{% if additional_checkout_buttons %}<div style="display: none !important;">{{ content_for_additional_checkout_buttons }}</div>{% endif %}
What the line does, and why it's safe
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
{% if additional_checkout_buttons %} |
Shopify's own check for whether your store has any express payment provider. On a store with none, the line outputs nothing at all. |
{{ content_for_additional_checkout_buttons }} |
The tag that asks Shopify to load its wallet code for this page. This is the part that was missing. |
display: none !important |
Keeps the output invisible, so nothing new appears on your storefront and you don't get a second set of buttons on the cart page. Only the drawer's express area — which was already reserved — gets filled. |
If the line is already somewhere in
theme.liquid, don't add a second copy.This is a change to your theme's own code. Duplicate your theme first if you want a rollback point, and note that the line lives in that theme only — see Limitations below.
Prefer not to edit code yourself? Contact our support team and we'll apply it for you with collaborator access.
Which buttons appear is Shopify's decision
Once the wallet code loads, Shopify — not the app — decides which buttons are eligible to render, on a per-customer basis.
| Factor | Effect |
|---|---|
| Payment settings | Only wallets activated in Settings → Payments are candidates. |
| Device and browser | Apple Pay appears on Apple devices and Safari; Google Pay in Chrome; and so on. |
| The customer's wallet | The customer needs an eligible card or wallet already set up on their device. |
| Market, country, currency | Eligibility differs per market. |
| Cart contents | A cart with nothing shippable in it can return no eligible wallet. |
Two customers can therefore see different buttons, and what you see on your own device isn't necessarily what your customers see. If Shopify returns no eligible method, the express area can load with nothing in it.
Limitations
| Limitation | Detail |
|---|---|
| No forcing a specific wallet | The app cannot make Shop Pay, PayPal, Apple Pay or Google Pay appear. It only provides the placement. |
| Button style and order | Shopify controls the buttons' branding, labels and order. The app controls the express area and the button height only. |
| Empty cart | On some themes the express buttons appear only after the first item is added to the cart, because the theme's empty cart page carries no wallet element. |
| The snippet is per theme | The line lives in the theme file you edited. Publish a different theme, or install a fresh copy of your theme, and it needs to be added again. |
| Theme updates | A theme update that replaces layout/theme.liquid removes the line. Re-check the drawer after updating your theme. |
Still not showing
Contact our human 24/7 support at support@essential-apps.com, and we will make it work in no time.