How can I set up a payment gateway for free sample orders?

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Merchant offers free sample orders with no shipping or product fees (checkout total $0.00) and manages orders via an external ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system.

Problem: For $0 orders, customers aren’t prompted for a payment method, so Shopify does not export a payment “gateway” value. The ERP requires a gateway to automatically categorize/sort orders and cannot handle these zero-payment orders without it.

Request: Seeking a method to assign/export a payment gateway (or equivalent marker) for free sample orders so the ERP can process them automatically.

Attachments: Two images (in a zip) showing a comparison—one order paid via PayPal vs. one free sample order without a payment method.

Status: No solution provided yet; the thread is a request for guidance and remains open.

Summarized with AI on February 12. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello everyone,

we offer our customers to order free samples.

No shipping fees, no product fees. Checkout 0,00 USD.

Also we use an external ERP System to manage our orders.

The problem we have is that when a customer buys a sample he does not have to put a payment mothods, because its for free.

So shopify do not export a payment “gateway”, because there isnt one.

Our ERP system cannot handle these orders and needs an payment “gateway” to automatically sort the orders.

Do you know if there is any possiblity to get this problem solved?

I added two images in the zip, one customer paid via paypal, the other ordered free samples.

Thanks a lot Nils Krug