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A custom payment method is a way to be paid that Shoply does not connect to: a bank transfer, a payment app, a page of your own. The buyer pays you outside Shoply, tells you they have, and the order waits for you. You check your own account, then approve the order to deliver it, or reject it. Shoply never sees this money and cannot tell whether it arrived. Your look at your own account is the only check.

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Adding one

Open Settings, then Payment Options, then Payment Methods. Custom Payment Methods is under the methods you have connected. Press Add Method. A store can have up to 10. Each one is a row of the list of your payment methods, at the top of Payment Methods, marked Custom: a new one goes last. Its switch takes it off the checkout without deleting it, and its menu edits or deletes it. Drag a row by its grip to put it anywhere in the list, above your connected methods too: the checkout offers them in that order.

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Filled in for each order

Write any of these in the instructions or the address, and the buyer sees it filled in for their order: So https://pay.example.com/?order={order}&amount={amount} sends a buyer to https://pay.example.com/?order=e09dd7db&amount=24.99. Anything else in braces is refused when you save.

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What the buyer does

Custom methods are listed at checkout where you put them among your other methods.
  1. The buyer picks it and presses Pay. They read your instructions, or their tab opens your page.
  2. They pay you, the way you said.
  3. Back on the checkout, they fill in the Payment Reference and add a Proof of Payment where you asked for them, and press I Have Paid. All of it is on one page.
A proof of payment is a PNG, JPEG or WebP picture of up to 5 MB. It is kept privately: only you see it, on the order’s page. Once they have said they paid, the checkout says it is being checked, and the order cannot be paid another way while you look. It is not cancelled as an unpaid order while it waits. What the buyer was told is fixed when they press Pay. A change you make to the method afterwards, or switching Require Proof of Payment on, applies to the next buyer.

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Approving or rejecting

You are told when a buyer says they have paid:
  • Email Me When a Payment Needs Checking, in Notifications, is on for every store. With no address of your own there, it goes to your account’s email.
  • Payments to Check, under On Discord, posts it to your Discord channel. It started on for stores that already used Discord; switch it on for yours if not.
The order’s page has a Payment Outside Shoply card: the method, the amount, the reference, when it was sent, and the proof of payment, which opens whole in a new tab.
  • Approve and Deliver completes the order as a paid one: the buyer is sent what they bought. If the order cannot be delivered, out of stock say, it says why and goes on waiting.
  • Reject cancels the order and releases any coupon it used. The buyer is not emailed. You can still mark it as paid later.

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Your server

A webhook, order.payment_submitted, is sent with the order when a buyer says they have paid. Approving it sends order.paid and the order’s other events, as any payment does, and rejecting it sends order.cancelled. With an API key, your server can approve or reject a payment and download its proof of payment, which needs Deliver Orders, and add, change, sort, switch and delete the methods themselves, which needs Change Payment Methods. A script that watches your own bank account could approve each payment it sees arrive. Shoply still never sees the money, and approving delivers the order. See Approve a payment to check and Custom payment methods in the API reference.

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Refunds

Shoply cannot send this money back. Refund Order credits the buyer’s store balance, or records a refund you made yourself.

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What they do not do

  • They are not offered on an invoice or a payment link.
  • A product’s fee for a payment method is set per connected provider, so a custom method carries none.