Deposit + Installment with Pre-Order Product

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A merchant needs to implement a two-stage payment system for a $2,000 pre-order product:

Payment Structure Needed:

  • Initial deposit: $500 (to fund production, similar to Tesla’s pre-order model)
  • Remaining balance: $1,500 paid via installments after product delivery (3-4 weeks)

Current Limitation:
Shopify’s native APIs don’t support combining pre-orders with installment payments over time.

Available Solutions:

  • Shop Pay installments (standard option)
  • Third-party partial payment apps like Downpay

Downpay App Features:

  • Supports upfront deposits
  • Allows one future payment (charged manually or automatically)
  • Currently in private beta and unlisted on Shopify
  • Plans to eventually support multiple future payments

The merchant would need to use a workaround app since Shopify doesn’t natively support this specific deposit + multi-installment combination for pre-orders.

Summarized with AI on November 21. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

For a client with a 2.000$ product we create to make the following preorder strategy:

  1. Preorder with a deposit of 500$ similair to what TESLA did to get money for production and everything.

  2. Once the product is delivered after 3-4 weeks the remaining 1.500$ can be paid via installments.

How can I do that in shopify? there is literally no way to buy a preorder product with deposit payment and then make the partial payment via installments.

Did anyone solve this?

2

Hey @KevinH1234 , unfortunately none of the Shopify APIs support preorder and then also allowing installment payments over time. The only options are either just using installments through Shop Pay or using a partial payment app (like ours!).

Our app Downpay supports taking an upfront deposit and then having 1 future payment you can charge manually or automatically. We’re hoping Shopify eventually extends this to allow more than one future payment.

If you’re interested in giving it a spin, email me for a download link. We’re unlisted on Shopify since we’ve just launched a private beta and are working with a couple dozen merchants to start.

Diana

cofounder @hypehound.io
diana@hypehound.io