Store Setup

5 Things to Know Before Opening a BASE Shop, and How to Avoid the Common Mistakes

#BASE #opening a shop #precautions #store setup

Sep 24, 2026

Read time: approx. 10 min

Leap Editorial Team

A team of e-commerce business experts

5 Things to Know Before Opening a BASE Shop, and How to Avoid the Common Mistakes

Quick Overview: Five Things to Check Before You Open on BASE

BASE's appeal is how easily you can get started — on the Standard plan, there's no setup fee and no monthly fee. But precisely because it's so easy to start, there are a few points where sellers tend to think "this isn't what I expected" after opening. This guide narrows the pre-launch checks down to five — fees, prohibited products, custom domains, payout request deadlines, and customer acquisition — using BASE's official help pages and pricing page as the source. Use it as a pre-launch checklist to avoid operational trouble from rule violations, unexpected fee burdens, and expired sales revenue.

Precaution 1: The Full Picture of Fees (Including the Easy-to-Miss Ones)

BASE has two plans: Standard and Growth. According to BASE's official pricing page, the Standard plan has no setup fee and no monthly fee, but charges a payment processing fee (3.6% + ¥40) and a service usage fee (3%) on each order. The Growth plan costs ¥198,960 (tax included) for a 12-month lump-sum payment — ¥16,580 per month — or ¥19,980 per month if paid monthly, with a 2.9% processing fee and no service usage fee.

For the Standard plan, BASE's legal disclosure (Specified Commercial Transactions Act notice) defines the service usage fee as 3% of "the sales price of the transaction (including consumption tax and shipping)." In other words, the calculation covers shipping as well as the product price. For example, on a Standard plan order with a total sales price of ¥10,000 (tax and shipping included), the processing fee is ¥10,000 × 3.6% + ¥40 = ¥400, and the service usage fee is ¥10,000 × 3% = ¥300 — ¥700 deducted in total, or about 7% of the sale.

A few additional fees are worth knowing about:

Payments via PayPay, Amazon Pay, or PayPal: On both plans, a 1% system fee is added to the processing fee.
Orders through the PAY ID app: A processing fee of 3.6% + ¥40 plus a service usage fee of 5.9% apply, and BASE's regular fees don't apply in this case. Listing on PAY ID is free, but fees are charged when an order comes in.
When you transfer your revenue: A flat ¥250 transfer fee applies, plus a ¥500 administrative fee if the requested amount is under ¥20,000. The amount actually deposited is "requested amount − transfer fee − administrative fee." For example, a ¥15,000 request results in ¥15,000 − ¥250 − ¥500 = ¥14,250.
If you want money faster: Payouts normally arrive 10 business days after you apply, but "Express Transfer" costs 1.5% of the requested amount and "Fastest Transfer" costs 3%. Both are only available to shops BASE has approved through its review, and can't be used for your very first payout request or for a bank account you haven't used before.

Before you open, run a quick simulation with your own selling prices and shipping costs to see how much you'll actually keep per order — it helps prevent pricing mistakes.

Precaution 2: Check Which Products and Behaviors Aren't Allowed

BASE maintains a list of products that can't be sold or registered. Here are some representative ones, following the wording in BASE's help pages:

Tobacco: Only nicotine-free e-cigarettes may be sold, and sellers must prove to BASE that the product contains no nicotine.
Game items and similar: "Data for characters, items, in-game virtual currency and so on in games (so-called real money trading)" is prohibited.
Financial info products and similar: "Financial information products, side-job brokering and similar information products and tools, and related goods and services" are prohibited. The list doesn't say all information products are banned across the board, but if you're unsure whether yours falls under this, it's safest to check with BASE before opening.
Pharmaceuticals: "Pharmaceuticals (including pharmaceuticals whose sale is not prohibited in Japan)" are covered.
Counterfeits, and products that infringe intellectual property: "Products that infringe third parties' intellectual property rights" are also prohibited.

As for resale goods and secondhand items, we couldn't find any blanket prohibition on them in BASE's official prohibited-products list. That said, the list does include "products for which the licenses, qualifications, or other conditions required by law for their sale have not been met." For example, a business that buys used goods to resell may need a "secondhand dealer license" (古物商許可) under Japan's Secondhand Articles Business Act, issued by the public safety commission with jurisdiction over your place of business. Selling without a required license can run afoul of the law, and could also become a problem under BASE's prohibited-products list. Whether you need one depends on what you sell and how you source it, so check with your local police station or similar authority before you open.

Beyond products, there are behaviors to watch out for too. BASE's help pages list the following, among others, as prohibited:

Changing an order's status to "Completed" before you've actually shipped the item
Charging buyers for the product without going through BASE Easy Payment
Posting reviews of your own shop (so-called astroturfing) or other inappropriate reviews
Removing the legal disclosure or the link to the contact form
Using another shop's product images or descriptions without permission

If BASE confirms a prohibited act, it states that it may take measures such as taking the shop private. The details of specific measures are set out in the terms of service, so it's worth reading through them before you open.

Precaution 3: Your Shop URL Can't Be Changed Later — Think About a Custom Domain Early

The URL you register when opening your BASE shop can't be changed later. If you really want to change it, you'd need to close your account and register again — and the old URL can't be reused after you leave.

The option for changing your URL is the "Custom Domain App," which lets you set a domain you've already obtained elsewhere as your BASE shop's URL. BASE doesn't offer domain registration itself, so you need to get the domain on your own. A few things to check when setting it up:

A root domain without a subdomain (e.g., https://example.com) can't be used because CNAME can't be configured for it. You set it up with a subdomain (e.g., shop.example.com).
It can take up to 72 hours for the setting to take effect.
The subdomain is automatically secured with SSL.
The contact form URL stays fixed and won't reflect your custom domain.

One important point: BASE's official help pages don't say what happens to the original URL after you switch to a custom domain (for example, whether it redirects), nor how the switch affects search engine ranking. So we can't state either of those from official information alone. In general, changing a URL after you've started publicizing it can mean redoing the old URL wherever you've listed it — social media profiles, external sites, printed materials, and so on. If you think you might want a custom domain eventually, it's likely easier to settle on your domain plan before you start promoting your shop widely.

Precaution 4: Miss the Payout Request Deadline, and Your Revenue Expires

On BASE, you need to submit a payout request to receive your sales revenue, and there's a deadline. According to the official help page, the date an order's status is changed to "Completed" (the shipping date) is the starting point; the cutoff is the end of each month, and the deadline for requesting a payout is six months after the cutoff month. For example, an order marked "Completed" in March has a March cutoff, and the deadline falls six months later, in September.

Revenue past the deadline expires and can no longer be withdrawn — and the help page states that "once revenue has expired, it cannot be restored." Before expiry, BASE sends notifications multiple times: notices in the shop dashboard, emails to your registered address, and in some cases contact by phone. The page also says "depending on the shop's status, expired amounts are transferred automatically," but the conditions for that aren't specified in the help page, so rather than counting on it, the safe approach is to submit payout requests yourself within the deadline.

There's a cash-flow angle here too. Since payouts normally take 10 business days from application, businesses that pay for inventory or advertising up front need a financial plan that accounts for that gap. If you're in a hurry, Express Transfer (1.5%) and Fastest Transfer (3%) are options, but they come with fees. Also, submitting small requests frequently makes the ¥250 transfer fee — and the ¥500 administrative fee for amounts under ¥20,000 — take a large share of the payout. It's worth timing your requests to balance fees against how soon you need the money.

Precaution 5: You Have to Design Your Own Customer Acquisition

BASE isn't a marketplace-style service like Amazon or Rakuten. BASE's own official guide says plainly that, unlike marketplaces, "since you can't rely on a marketplace's traffic, you need to attract customers yourself," and that "the key to growing sales on BASE is customer acquisition." Simply opening a shop doesn't bring orders — you need to design your own path to prospects, whether that's social media, a blog, advertising, or email.

BASE does offer some things that help with acquisition, such as listing in its buyer-facing "PAY ID" app and BASE Apps extensions in the "Attract Customers" category. But those support your own efforts rather than replace them. Thinking through, before you open, how you'll reach your first customers is one of the biggest factors in preventing a stall after launch.

Final Pre-Launch Checklist

Here's a summary of what to confirm before you open:

I've calculated fees and my take-home amount per order based on my expected selling price and shipping cost
The products I plan to sell aren't on BASE's prohibited list (and I've checked with BASE if I wasn't sure)
I've checked whether any licenses are needed for what I'm selling and how to obtain them
I've chosen my shop URL and decided whether I'll use a custom domain
I understand the payout request deadline and the fees on transfers
I have a plan for how I'll attract customers after opening

FAQ

Q. Should I start on the Standard plan or the Growth plan?

A. The Standard plan has no setup fee or monthly fee, which suits the stage where you just want to start selling. The Growth plan charges a monthly fee (¥198,960 for a 12-month lump sum, or ¥16,580 per month; ¥19,980 per month if paid monthly) in exchange for a 2.9% processing fee and no service usage fee. A realistic approach is to consider switching once your sales grow enough that fees become a heavy burden, comparing them against the monthly fee.

Q. Can I sell resale goods on BASE?

A. We couldn't find any blanket prohibition on resale or secondhand goods in BASE's official prohibited-products list. However, counterfeits, and products for which the licenses or qualifications required by law haven't been met, are prohibited. For example, reselling used goods you've bought may require a secondhand dealer license under Japanese law, so depending on the product, legal procedures may be required — we recommend checking in advance.

Q. What happens if I forget a payout request and the deadline passes?

A. Revenue past the deadline expires and can no longer be withdrawn. The official help page says that once revenue expires, it can't be restored. There's also a mention that "expired amounts are transferred automatically depending on the shop's status," but since the conditions aren't specified, it's safest to submit requests yourself within the deadline.

Summary and Key Takeaway

Looking back across the five points, what they share is that BASE offers an easy start, while the decisions that follow are left to the seller. Calculating fees, checking whether a product can be sold, deciding on a URL, tracking the deadline for collecting revenue, and attracting customers — all of these can be checked before you press the button to open. Opening an online shop isn't the finish line; the real challenge is staying in a state where it keeps selling. A little extra effort before opening reduces the extra costs and trouble that come later.

That said, working through everything from fee simulations to acquisition planning on your own is a lot. Leap offers an AI E-Commerce Agent that supports building and running an e-commerce site entirely through conversation with AI. If you're feeling uncertain about preparing to open your shop, take a look at what Leap offers.

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