When you're buying something in a retail store, the payment is clear: you give cash or your card to the seller who charges you on the spot.

What about online stores? "How can I get my money?" is a question you may be asking yourself when thinking of opening such a shop with our platform. We say, "It's easy, as well."

With our platform, you will run a robust online store that is built right into your site pages, and we provide different ways to accept payments, starting from wire transfers to credit cards. This article will shed light on how it all works and what to do to receive payments.

From the beginning...

Let's split the purchasing process into several steps:

Step #4 can be divided into more steps, and differs depending on what payment method is chosen. We will break it down later, but for now we're concentrating on general information about payment methods. 

So you've got your first order. You're contemplating its details in your control panel at the Sales page. And here comes The Question, "Where did the money go?". The first thing you should know is that we don't store or transfer the money to you. Rather, we serve as a go-between in processing payments: we keep your customers' order data and provide you with tools to arrange payments and manage the orders. Payment methods are ways your customers will send you the money for your goods. Generally every online store can support two types of payment methods: online and offline. 

Online payment means that the funds are transferred to you (to your payment account) immediately when the customer confirms the payment. 

Offline payment implies that the money is transferred later since the customer is supposed to arrange the transfer offline; for example, go to a nearby bank to transfer the money (that would be bank/wire transfer payment method), or you should give the customer a call to agree on the payment ("Phone order" payment method), or customer will give cash to the courier, etc.

Let's go into detail on each method type.

The process of receiving money for your sales via an online payment method involves three parties:

Choosing a payment gateway means to choosing a company (payment processor) who meets the following criteria:

Here is a list of all online payment methods that work in our platform. With all these methods, you don't have to do any programming as they're already programmed in our system. 

Next we will elaborate on the offline payment method type.

Offline payment methods are payment options that don't require customers to submit a credit card or any other real-time transactions. You may want to use those options if you want money to change hands after placing orders rather than at checkout. For example, such a workflow would fit your business processes if your customers are supposed to pay via offline bank transfer (wire transfer) - in such a case, at checkout a customer gets all the necessary information, such as your bank account details and total order cost, and then makes the actual payment. 

When an offline payment is used, no actual payment is supposed to take place at checkout. Instead, a customer is informed of how to transfer money to a seller and how to make contact after the payment. They go through all checkout steps and place an order by pressing the 'Place order' button. After that, the customer sees the order confirmation page, the order is saved in your store, and email notifications are sent. Instantly, it becomes visible in your control panel along with all necessary details about the customer and ordered items.

Such orders get a "Queued" status, which indicates that the order was placed successfully, but you haven't received any funds yet. Again, in case of using an offline payment method, a customer isn't charged at the checkout, nothing asks them to submit a credit card payment or any other real-time payment transaction in your store. The payment itself is expected to be done outside the platform after the order is placed. As soon as the customer pays for it and you receive the money, you can change the order status to 'Accepted' and ship the ordered items to the customer. 

By means of our built-in offline payment options, you can set up any offline payment in your store. There are three offline methods types, which all work the same way described above except for the details they ask the customer to fill in. You can base your store's offline payment methods on them. They are listed below:

Offline basic

When this payment method is used, a customer is not asked for any payment details at checkout apart from the standard address form. You can use Offline basic for any custom offline payment option you want. For example, it can be used for setting up the following payment methods in your store:

With 'Offline check' payment options, a customer is asked for a check Owner's full name, Checking account number and Bank routing number. You can use this option for any kind of check payments you like, including personal and business checks.

This type of offline payment allows your customers to buy your items using a purchase order. A customer is asked for a PO number, Company name, Buyer's full name and Job position at checkout.