Custom Shopify Checkout with Storefront API

[rjh3]

It's not clear to me anywhere the answer to my question/needs. There are a lot of things that would point to the negative, but the documentation for Storefront API would seem to indicate the possibility—though I can't find any examples of it.

I'm looking for a way to basically recreate a checkout experience native to my website and/or web app. It would seem this is possible based on this documentation: https://help.shopify.com/en/api/storefront-api/guides/checkout-guide, particular the heading "Completing the Checkout" where it talks about several methods of processing payment and completing a checkout without using the "Web Checkout/webUrl".

Am I reading this correctly?

I've read in other places that it's possible to pass information over, but ultimately you have to take the user to the prebuilt web checkout page. But, based on the documentation, it would seem that everything can be handled "on-site" with javascript, leveraging something like vue.js and the Storefront API.

Additionally, this store needs to support subscriptions. Currently, that's only possible with a third-party app—if we're able to do the above, I'm worried that the third-party app might not work with a custom checkout. Although, it has to end up in Shopify's system at some point, but the order processing of a future automated order would certainly be different.

Can anyone help point me in the right direction, if not directly answer my questions?

Thanks!

[SBD_]

Hey @rjh3,

Am I reading this correctly?

Yep, you can build your own checkout experience - you'll just need to use something like stripe to tokenize credit cards (on behalf of merchants that have enabled Shopify Payments as their payment gateway solution).

Regarding subscriptions, apps might have a hard time. A subscription feature is coming soon.

[rjh3]

@SBD_,

Thanks for confirming! This is great news.

Could you expand more on the subscription piece? What would cause them to have a hard time? I was worried about that being a possibility, but the Apps should be living on the back-end only and kick-in once an order is placed, no? (ie as long as the order gets into Shopify and is flagged "subscription", it should work, no?)

Thanks,

Rob

[SBD_]

Hey @rjh3,

It depends on how the third party subscription app works. If it's purely working on the backend you should be good to go. If they're collecting card details along the way, it could be an issue. Let me know how you go!