Interspire Product Knowledge Base

After adding products to your store and choosing which shipping providers to use, you now need to choose and configure which checkout methods to display on your web site. This article will explain what checkout methods are, how you can choose which checkout methods are available to your customers, and how you can configure each checkout module as needed.

What are checkout methods?

Checkout methods allow customers to pay for their order during the checkout process on your web site. There are two different checkout method types in Interspire Shopping Cart:

1. Online checkout methods. All online checkout methods involve the customer paying for their order using one of the many real-time payment providers bundled into Interspire Shopping Cart, such as PayPal, WorldPay or Authorize.net. All online checkout methods require you to signup for a merchant account before enabling them, however you will find step-by-step instructions on how to do this for every checkout method from the control panel (more on this shortly).
2. Offline checkout methods. All offline checkout methods involve the customer placing their order from your store and then paying after their order is submitted, using one of the offline checkout methods such as paying by phone, money order, cash on delivery, etc. You do not need to signup for any third party services to use the offline checkout methods from your store.

How can I choose and configure different checkout methods?

You can choose and configure different shipping methods for your store by clicking on the Settings menu and then choose the Checkout Settings option:



You will be presented with the Checkout Settings page, which allows you to choose and configure the checkout methods you want to make available from your store:



To enable a checkout method, just follow these simple steps:

1. Click the checkbox for the checkout method you want to enable from the Checkout Methods box
2. Click Save
3. You will now see that a tab appears for the checkout method you enabled:
   
   
   
   
4. Click the new tab and you will be able to configure the selected checkout method. A full step-by-step help guide is shown on the page which explains everything from creating an account with the checkout provider (if required) to filling out the checkout providers details:
   
   
   
   
5. Follow the instructions, fill in the required details and click Save
   
6. Certain checkout providers allow you to pay for orders from your store in Test Mode. This is a great way to make sure the checkout provider is integrated into your store before allowing customers to buy from you. To test a checkout provider, just follow steps 1-5 and from the checkout provider's settings tab you will see a Test Mode option. Change this to Yes to enable test mode for that checkout provider. Place a few test orders from your store, and when the checkout provider works as expected, change Test Mode back to No to allow customers to buy from you and have their credit cards debited during the checkout process. Please note that any orders you place in test mode for different checkout providers wont actually debit your credit card, although you will see the same success/fail messages as you would if test mode wasn't enabled.
   
7. To test offline checkout methods, simply place an order from your store and choose a particular offline checkout method. Because offline checkout methods don't actually take payment from the customer during the checkout process, there's no test mode available for them.
   
8. You can repeat steps 1-7 to enable as many checkout providers as you need. When it comes time for the customer to pay for their order and you have more than one checkout method enabled, they will be able to choose the checkout method they would like to use. If only one checkout method is enabled then it will become the default selection for the customer during checkout.

Interspire Shopping Cart includes a powerful module system that allows you to create and integrate your own checkout modules as required. To learn more about this please go to the developer's guide help section.