Checkout concepts
Understand the buyer journey, payment outcomes, and follow-up after checkout.
Checkout is where buyers review an offer, enter billing information, and complete or initiate payment. It can create an invoice, a payment, and a subscription when the offer is recurring.
Purpose
Choose Payment Links to share a reusable offer. Choose Cart Checkout when your backend prepares a specific cart.
A Payment Link creates or resumes a Checkout Session when the buyer starts the interactive flow. An API integration creates the session directly, using catalog prices or inline pricing. Both use the same hosted checkout and collection flow.
What Checkout Does
- Shows the offer, quantities, and amounts due now and later.
- Collects customer and billing information.
- Shows payment methods available for the cart, country, currency, and enabled connections.
- Starts payment and creates the applicable billing records.
- Shows the result, instructions, or next required action.
Main Checkout Outcomes
| Outcome | What it means | Follow-up |
|---|---|---|
| Completed | The buyer finished checkout; payment may have succeeded or no immediate charge may be required. | Check payment status and the relevant event. |
| Pending | The flow was submitted, but payment still needs confirmation or action. | Follow the instructions and wait for the final result. |
| Failed | Payment could not complete, for example because of a decline, invalid details, rejection, or processing error. | Review the cause before retrying or choosing another method. |
Checkout Session status describes the buyer flow; paymentStatus describes payment. A successful redirect or completed page does not prove collection. Your integration must verify and deduplicate the signed invoice.paid event before fulfilling a paid purchase.
Checkout and Product Types
- One-time offers: collect a single amount; a zero-amount offer needs no charge.
- Subscriptions: can charge the first invoice, start a trial, or use later invoice collection, depending on configuration.
- Mixed carts: can combine a one-time setup fee, subscription items, and trials with amounts due immediately. Review what is due now and what will be billed later.
Customer Information Collected During Checkout
Depending on the offer, checkout can request name, email, billing address, country, postal code, and configured custom fields. The information identifies the customer, supports invoicing and payment routing, and helps follow-up communication.
Payment Method Selection
Available methods depend on the selected country and currency, configured payment gateways, and enabled method families. A method available for one offer or route may not be available for another.
Country Selection and Currency Availability
A currency must be supported by the full cart and an enabled payment route for the selected country. If one product does not support USD, the cart cannot offer USD for that purchase.
Checkout may select an initial route based on the buyer's inferred country, such as ARS in Argentina or BRL in Brazil. This does not establish that other currencies are unavailable.
Use the country selector in the footer to change the route. Where a country has multiple valid currency routes, select the corresponding option, such as Argentina (ARS) or Argentina (USD).
If a currency is missing, check every product's configured prices and the account's route for that country and currency before asking the buyer to retry.
Pricing, Discounts, and Totals
Review prices, quantities, product discounts, promotions, coupons, total due now, and future recurring amounts. A trial can defer some charges while other items are payable immediately. Configured benefits are subject to eligibility; the final checkout quote determines which apply.
Checkout and Invoices
An invoice records the amount owed. Payment records describe collection, and a subscription records the recurring commercial relationship. An invoice can be paid immediately, later, or through follow-up collection.
Checkout and Subscription Creation
Initial subscription status depends on the offer: a trial can start as trialing; a failed first automatic charge can leave it incomplete; established payment can activate it; invoice collection can start an active subscription that relies on invoice due dates. See Subscriptions.
What the Customer Can Experience
Buyers may see immediate payment confirmation, a trial without a charge today, a pay-later flow, or extra instructions for a pending payment. Redirect-based methods, bank transfers, and cash or ticket methods can finish after the buyer leaves checkout.
What Support and Operations Should Expect
Check checkout submission, payment completion, subscription creation, and invoice balance separately. A free or trial checkout does not prove that money was collected. Use Collection follow-up to investigate pending or failed payments.
Functional Summary
After checkout, confirm the invoice, payment result, and any subscription separately. For an integration, use verified webhooks rather than the browser result to confirm a paid purchase.