Shopify Payments on-boarding and functionalities

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

A merchant is evaluating a switch from Authorize.Net to Shopify Payments and seeks clarification on three key operational concerns:

Transition & Downtime:

  • Whether deactivating the current processor is immediate
  • How orders would be handled during any transition period

Onboarding Timeline:

  • Expected duration for application submission, financial verification, and approval process

Virtual Terminal Capability:

  • Whether Shopify Payments supports processing non-Shopify orders (email/phone orders) through a virtual terminal or payment portal
  • This is critical since not all products are sold through Shopify and the business receives orders through multiple channels

The merchant notes that Shopify’s chat support and Help Center documentation have not adequately addressed these questions. The discussion remains open with no responses yet.

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

Hello,

We’re considering switching our payment processor (currently Authorize.Net) to Shopify Payments. I have some questions about the on-boarding process and some functionality that couldn’t be addressed satisfactorily by Chat Shopify Support, nor by their online help resource (Shopify Help Center | Shopify Payments) .

  1. Would the deactivation of our current payment processor will take effect immediately? If so, what would happen to orders placed on Shopify in the meantime?
  2. Presumably, there would be some sort of on-boarding process, application submission for financial details, verification and all that. How long does this process typically take?
  3. Our company doesn’t have all of our products available for sale on Shopify, plus we still get orders via email and voice calls. So, we need to still process some credit cards orders outside of Shopify. Would Shopify Payments allow us to process a non-Shopify Credit Card order. In other words, would we able to login to Shopify Payments portal and process the credit card transaction, let’s say via a virtual terminal?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Immanuel