FedEx introduced a suite called Global Trade Navigator on September 9. (FedEx newsroom) Most of it is plumbing. One piece is aimed at DTC brands, and the trade press picked it up two days later.
FedEx now sells an app that puts a guaranteed duty and tax number inside Shopify checkout.
What is actually in the bundle
Trade Planner is free on fedex.com. It looks up Harmonized System codes and returns estimated duties, taxes, fees, and the documents a shipment needs. Ship Manager picked up fields for customs value and country of manufacture. Global Trade APIs push the same data into your own systems through the FedEx Developer Portal. The Import Tool and Reporting got clearance visibility and historical trade data.
Then there is the FedEx Duty and Tax app on Shopify, which is the only part a brand shipping 1,000 to 25,000 orders a month will touch on a Tuesday.
Read the guarantee before you buy it
The app runs $99 a month. If the real duties and taxes land above the number your customer saw at checkout, FedEx covers the difference. If they land below it, no refund is issued, and the quoted amount already includes a service fee. (Supply Chain Dive, September 11, 2026)
That is an insurance product priced like one. Nothing wrong with that. Know which way the variance runs before you build a margin assumption on top of it.
Then run it against your volume. At 400 international orders a month, $99 is about 25 cents an order and disappears. At 20 international orders a month, it is roughly five dollars an order before the service fee, probably more than the customs problem is costing you.
The number FedEx is selling against
The pitch rests on FedEx's own Small Business Trade Index, fielded by Morning Consult between April 2 and April 8, 2026, among 1,000 US small business decision makers at companies with fewer than 500 employees. Margin of error is plus or minus 3 points. (survey deck)
Sixty-eight percent say customers are surprised by duties, taxes, or fees at delivery at least some of the time. That is the stat in every headline this week. The one under it is more useful. Sixty percent say customers abandon purchases when they see estimated duties at checkout, and a separate 60% issue refunds or credits over duty misunderstandings.
Put those two side by side. Hiding the duty produces a refund. Showing the duty produces an abandoned cart. Disclosure moves the loss from after the sale to before it, which is the cheaper place to take it. Put the conversion hit in your forecast anyway.
This became a live problem because the duty-free floor went away. We walked through the mechanics when CBP set its September 22 date for electronic mail entries.
Four choices, and what everyone else picked
The same survey asked what businesses are doing about duty confusion. The gap between what brands do today and what they plan to do next is the interesting part.
- Display estimated landed costs before checkout. 48% already do it. Another 45% plan to or are considering it.
- Absorb duties and fees into your prices. 42% already do it.
- Elect the customer to pay duties and fees at delivery. Only 31% do it today, but 53% plan to or are considering it. That is the largest planned shift in the survey.
- Avoid or limit sales to complex tariff countries. 34% already do it.
The FedEx app addresses the first one. If you absorb duties into your product price, a checkout widget solves a problem you do not have.
What this means for your brand
Pick your duty model first. Buy software second. A brand that has not decided whether it ships delivered duty paid or delivered duty unpaid cannot evaluate a $99 checkout guarantee, because the answer depends entirely on that choice.
The failure mode to avoid is a mismatch between the quote and the shipment. If checkout collects duties but the parcel leaves your warehouse on unpaid terms, the carrier invoices your customer at the door anyway. They have now paid twice, and you have a refund plus a support ticket. Before you rely on any duty guarantee, confirm which carriers and destinations it covers, then make sure your fulfillment side ships on the same terms checkout promised.
Keeping those two in sync is fulfillment work. Our international shipping routes through FlavorCloud, DHL, UPS, and USPS, with DDP available so duties are collected upfront and customs declarations generate from order data instead of a spreadsheet someone maintains by hand. Orders leave Canal Winchester within 24 hours whether they are headed to Dublin, Ohio or Dublin, Ireland.
The other fix is unglamorous and free. Every duty estimate is only as good as the HS classification feeding it. Bad codes produce bad quotes no matter how much software sits on top of them. That cleanup costs an afternoon and zero dollars a month.
Not sure your checkout and your labels agree? Send us your order data and we will map the lanes.
FAQ
Do I need a duty app if my 3PL already ships DDP?
Usually not for the reason FedEx is selling it. If duties are collected upfront through your fulfillment partner, the customer already sees a total that holds at the door. A checkout guarantee earns its keep when you want a contractually fixed number regardless of how the classification lands, and will pay a premium for it.
Should I show duties at checkout or build them into the price?
Depends on your margin and your average order value. Absorbing works when your markup can carry it and your destinations are concentrated. Displaying works when duty rates vary too much across markets to average out. The survey has 42% absorbing and 48% displaying, so there is no consensus to hide behind. Price a few of your real lanes both ways before you decide.