Is it possible to set up standalone payments on Shopify?

[TMAce]

I am wanted to set up a way for customers to make payments by credit card on the Shopify payments that are not tied to a specific website item.  For example, a customer wants to purchase a service or offline product and the price is variable so there isn't a fixed price to add a product for purchase.

In this case, we would want the customer to navigate to a specific page such as www.website.com/payments and be able to enter the amount they will pay and make the payment securely and we would get a notice when payment is completed.  Is something like this possible with Shopify?

[Sophia · Accepted solution]

Hello, @TMAce!

Your best option here might be to create draft orders (under Orders > Drafts in the admin) for cases where a service or product isn't listed in your online store. Draft orders will allow you to create a custom item and set a custom price specifically for that order, so you don't need to list an item online. Once you've input all of the order information, you can email your customer a secure checkout link to complete the purchase. The major benefit with draft orders is that you'll be able to see details in your store's order history on what each order was for (based on the Item name and/or Notes you enter). Would this work for you?

Alternatively, you could use an app like Pay What You Want. You'll still need to set up a "product" with this option, but you could make the product title something general like "Payments" and in the description, you could leave instructions for the customer about how to proceed with their order. With an app like this, you would be sending your customer to a product page where they would enter their own price, rather than sending them a checkout link with the price set for them.

[TMAce]

Sophia,
your suggestions were really awesome and quite helpful.    I have heard that adding apps is not ideal because it can slow down performance. I dont know if that is true or not.

In any event, your suggest gave me the idea to add a new item to our system and we can dynamically update the price from our front end system to accomplish what we need to do.  It not the perfect solution but I think it will work with minimal or no development effort.

I quite appreciate your comment. You are awesome.

[Sophia]

I'm so happy that I was able to help you out! Feel free to follow up here with any questions that arise as you implement the new solution.

It is possible that apps can slow down store speed either if there are a large number of apps installed or if the apps have added a significant amount of code to a store's theme in order to operate. If you only have a handful of apps installed on your store, it isn't likely that the performance will be negatively affected. However, if you are ever concerned about your store's performance, we have a guide on improving your online store speed here.