When customers add products to cart and head to checkout, they can choose how they want to pay for their order using any of the payment methods that you've enabled in your store’s admin panel → Payment. You can enable various payment methods in your online store.

You can use online and offline payment methods to accept money in your online store. Offering several options to your customers will increase conversion and reduce the number of abandoned carts. There is no limit to how many payment methods you can set up, but two-three methods should suffice and don’t distract shoppers from finishing their purchase.

With online payment methods, you can accept credit/debit cards, PayPal, or cryptocurrency in your online store.

The online store integrates with many third-party payment systems to process your transactions. You can see what payment systems are available for your store country in the store's admin Payment page: scroll to the More options to accept the online payments section and click Choose Payment Method. Recommended payment providers for U.S. merchants are Square, Stripe, and PayPal.

All transactions are processed by third-party payment providers who have their own rules and may charge extra fees. Be sure to check these details with your preferred payment processor when setting up a payment method.

To accept payments online, you should open a merchant account with a payment processor from the list of supported payment gateways and then set up the chosen payment gateway in your store.

To add an online payment method in your store:

5. Keep the Show at checkout setting as Enabled to offer this payment method at checkout.

6. (optional) Add payment instructions for this payment method at checkout:

TIP: In case you’d like to use a payment system that is not integrated with an online store, you can connect that payment processor with your store using Add Payment Method API. Then you can offer it as an online payment method in your store.

Here is how ordering with online payment method works in a nutshell:

You can check order payment statuses in your store’s admin panel → My Sales section.

Your payment provider has to process a transaction first, then it adds the funds to your merchant account. For successfully processed orders, you can withdraw the money from your merchant account to your bank account.

TIP: If you sell expensive products and want to provide a financing option for your customers, consider enabling PayPal Credit in your store's checkout. It allows customers to pay for online purchases in installments.

For customers who pick up their orders in person or don't want to pay online using a credit card, you can offer manual payment methods like cash, phone order, bank transfer, etc.

After you register your store account, you can start accepting online orders as soon as you add products because an offline payment method (Cash) is enabled in your store by default. With offline payment methods, no actual payment is gathered during the order placement. You can use the customer information from order details to contact the buyer and explain to them how they can pay you for the ordered products — transfer money to your bank account, pay later via invoice created by you on PayPal side, use cash payment, or some other ways.

You can add as many offline payment methods as you need and supply them with how-to payment instructions so that shoppers can see them at checkout and follow them to pay.

To add an offline payment method in your store:

Learn more about setting up manual (offline) payment methods.

After customers visit your store, add products to their cart and proceed to checkout, they specify their email address and see payment options you have enabled.

Your customers select the payment option they prefer and proceed:

For online payments, customers enter their details and pay immediately.

For offline payments (e.g., cash on delivery, phone order, bank transfer), customers pay you the following payment instruction added by you for that payment method. If you haven’t added any payment instructions, you must contact the customer to arrange payment.
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In both cases, if orders are successfully placed, customers receive Order Confirmations by email:

When you change a payment or fulfillment status of an order, your store sends email notification about this update to the buyer as well. Make sure you’ve enabled the Order Confirmation and Order Status Changed notification types in your store’s admin panel → Settings → Mail.

Besides buyers can check their order status at any time in their customer account in your store:

TIP: Use abandoned cart recovery to remind customers about products they added to the bag and didn't buy.

With each new order, you will receive an email notification that shows the order status. You can also check the order status in your store admin panel → My Sales → Orders.

The Paid order status means that your customer selected an online payment option and the third-party provider processed the payment. You can now prepare this order for shipping and ship it to the buyer.

The Awaiting payment order status can mean one of two things:

You can check what payment method has been used for an order by viewing that order’s details in your store admin panel → My Sales → Orders:

Sometimes the display name of a payment method can be generic, like “Credit or debit card”. To check what payment processor stands behind a payment method, go to your store admin panel → Payments page and find that payment method in the list.

Once the order is Paid, go ahead and ship the order.

When customers pay online, the transactions are processed by third-party payment providers (e.g., PayPal, Square). The funds are deposited to your account with the payment provider and you can withdraw these funds using the methods offered by the payment provider.

In case of offline payment methods (e.g. cash on delivery, bank transfer, phone order), customers are supposed to pay you outside of online store using the payment instructions you’ve provided them with at checkout or after the order placement (for example, by email or in a phone conversation).