Multiple Shopify merchants are experiencing a critical issue where customers cannot complete checkout after receiving draft invoices. The problem manifests as an indefinite loading/spinning screen with no error messages appearing in abandoned checkouts.
Key Details:
Affects both PayPal and credit card payments
Only impacts draft orders; regular site purchases work normally
Issue began appearing within the last 1-2 weeks
Occurs with both new and returning customers who previously completed transactions successfully
Affects customers using various browsers, devices, and incognito mode
Confirmed customer billing information matches requirements
Tested with both custom and existing catalog items
Checked with/without discounts applied
Current Status:
Unresolved. Shopify support (Maz) has escalated the issue, directing affected merchants to contact technical support directly through the help center, as account-specific investigation is required. At least three additional merchants have confirmed experiencing identical problems.
Summarized with AI on November 2.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Have had multiple customers have this issue over the weekend where they receive a draft invoice from one of our team members, and upon them attempting to check out, they cannot, the most recent is paypal, but user says neither his nor his wife’s PayPal will work. Both tried with separate accounts, the checkout simply stalls.
We are using shopify as the payment processer but see zero setting that are not accurate in our admin, nor have we changed anything on our end.
Prior customers have tried to use credit cards, they claim they enter the payment data and submit, but the transaction simply spins and doesn’t complete. These orders are not showing in our abandon checkouts either.
We have customers able to checkout while simply purchasing off our site, this seems only to be impacting draft orders. We have tried it with both custom items and items already in our systems, with and without discounts. This just started happening this last week as we have been doing draft orders just fine up until recently.
I understand that this situation can be frustrating for both you and your customers. Could you please let us know if any customers are encountering error messages or if the page is simply loading indefinitely? If you have any error messages, it would be helpful if you could provide screenshots here.
It’s important to ensure that there are no issues with the format or accuracy of the information entered in the Draft Order or Customer Account, as this can impact the checkout process. We recommend double-checking with customers to verify that their billing information and address are valid. Additionally, please ensure that the credit card and billing information entered by the customer matches the details on file with their financial institution.
For instance, it’s possible that the business name was mistakenly entered in the FIRST NAME field.
You can also review your Settings > Checkout page to ensure that the store’s customer information requirements align with the customer account information.
If an account only has a last name or company name, but the Customer Information setting requires both a first and last name - the customer account will need to be updated to meet the requirements before a draft order can be created using that account for contact and billing information.
No error codes, simply spins on indefinitely, no screen shots. Of the samples we’ve seen, the customer data matches what it should be, in fact one issue was with a long time customer who had made several purchases from us prior and is already in our system. We only sell/ship to the United States so the currency matches.
This is a new issue, we’ve done hundreds of draft orders to date, this issue just popped up this last weekend as noted in the main post.
Thanks so much for your response and additional context.
I appreciate you checking everything out for me, so those settings can be ruled out.
It looks like we’ll need to access your account in order to resolve this issue. While we’re not able to provide account-specific support via the Community Forums at this time, we’d be happy to continue assisting you through our help center here at this page. Please follow the prompts by the virtual assistant there so that this can be sent up to our technical team for troubleshooting!
I am also experiencing this issue now. I was able to send drafts out normally a couple weeks ago, but now our customer has the indefinite load time. Hoping someone adds to this thread!
I am experiencing the exact same issue! Customer says they have tried using an incognito browser, multiple different browsers, and even different devices and can’t open it. They are saying it’s taking several minutes to attempt to load and then sending an error message after.
The weird thing is that I am not experiencing this issue nor are any of my employees who I sent the invoice link for testing to.
