Your customers check out on your store like normal, but select the “Paythen Payment plan” option. The order is submitted and all details come through in the Shopify admin

Your customers get a beautiful, branded email with their custom payment plan link that lets them pay and start their payment plan

You'll get an email notification once the customer starts their payment plan and has made their first payment

You update the payment status in Shopify to “Mark as Paid” (manually) and proceed with order fulfillment as you normally would. That’s it!

(You'll set all this up via the step-by-step instructions below).

If you haven’t already, create your Paythen trial account.

If you don’t already have one, you can create a free Stripe account at the same time. Stripe is the payment processor used by Paythen. If you have Shopify Payments enabled on your store, that is also powered by Stripe (along with many leading businesses) – but you’ll need to create a separate Stripe account for this workflow since Shopify payments doesn’t allow you to connect external tools. There is no cost to create a Stripe account.

In your Paythen dashboard, go to Settings > Integrations and switch "Shopify" to ON. This will show you a new menu option called “Templates”.

In your Paythen dashboard, go to "Templates" and create a new template. Configure this how you want – the number of installments, any additional fees, upfront fees, etc. You can read more about templates here.

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Payments.

In the Payment providers section, select Create custom payment method.

In Custom payment method name, enter "Paythen Payment Plan" or just "Payment Plan" – or anything else you prefer – this is how it shows to customers on the checkout page 👇

In Additional details, enter any information that you want shown below the payment method name in your checkout. We recommend something like:

Pay for your order in 6 easy weekly installments. Once you complete the order here, a payment link will be emailed to you. The order is only finalized once you complete payment.

The screenshot above shows how it will appear for customers 👆

In Payment instructions, enter the instructions that you want your customer to follow to pay for the order. These instructions are shown on the order confirmation page after the customer completes their order – only for this payment method. We recommend something like:

Please check your email for the payment plan link. Your order is not finalized until you complete this step and make the first payment. If you haven't received this email in a few minutes, please check your spam folder, or email us at support@yourcompany.com. 👈 👈 Remember to change this to your actual support email.

If you want this text to be even more prominent, you could add part of it in ALL CAPS.

Click Activate. This will make this payment method live on your store and will show for customers along side other payment methods, like this 👇

Now complete a test order on your store using this "Paythen payment plan" option (and a real working email that you receive). This will serve as test data in the Zapier step we'll set up next.

Log in to your Zapier account. If you don't have one, you can create a free trial account

Use our pre-made Zap template to easily set up this Zap

This Zap has three steps – the trigger (Shopify), a filter step and an action step (Paythen).

This Zap looks for new orders in your Shopify store, then filters out any orders that are not using the Payment Plan method, and sends a beautiful branded email to your customers that chose the payment plan method. When you edit the Zap template above, Zapier will ask you to authenticate your Shopify account.

In the filtering step (step 2) of this Zap, ensure you choose text that matches the name of the payment method you chose in your Shopify admin when you set up the manual payment method in the step above.

In step 3, our template uses the Send Payment Plan Link via Email in Paythen Zapier action. Choose Paythen in the app step, then choose the Send Payment Plan Link via Email in Paythen action.

If it asks you to authenticate your Paythen account, please do so, then in the action step, enter the correct Shopify order values for the first four fields which are required:

a) In the Paythen template link field, paste in your unique Paythen template url here – you created this in step 1 of this guide. This will be visible on the template summary page in Paythen:

b) In the Customer email field, enter the customer email field from the Shopify order step.

c) In the Plan name field, you can make it anything you want. We recommend using the format [Customer first name] [Customer last name] Payment Plan Order #[Order number] – this will generate a plan name like this:

Jimmy McNulty Payment Plan Order #1092

This plan name is used in customer emails and in your Paythen dashboard. You can add any static or dynamic values in this field depending on what you prefer.

d) In the Total payment amount field, we recommend adding the "Current total price" or whichever field has the total amount from the order – including any delivery fees, taxes and charges. This is the amount we'll use as the total for the payment plan.

All other fields shown in the Zapier action step are optional. If you add any values here, they will be used, otherwise the values you set in the Paythen template will be used.

Test your Zap and set it live!

Now go to your Shopify store and place an order– check out with the Paythen Payment Plan option of course! If it works as it should, you should get an email with the right amount and your name. Click on the "CLICK HERE TO PAY" link to ensure it opens a plan with the correct amount and details.

Remember, you can test this entire flow on our demo Shopify store, including simulating the payment step using a test card.

As soon as a customer commences their payment plan and has made their first payment, you get an automatic notification from Paythen as an account admin so you'll know the customer has paid.

Once you do, you can log in to your Shopify admin dashboard and update the order status to "Mark as paid".

At the moment, this is a manual step. We are looking into a better way to automate this.

Depending on your order fulfillment workflow, we also recommend adding a note in your timeline for this order with the link to the customer's summary page in Paythen. Eg:

Expected payment plan completion date is x. See more info here 👉https://paythen.co/examples/customer-summary-self-serve-page-example

(you would use their actual customer link here - this is available via the new customer email notification you received or the customers page in your Paythen dashboard)

From this point on, you can fulfill the order as you normally do. If it's a physical product, you can ship it immediately, or wait till the payment plan is paid in full.

As an admin, you also get an email notification when a customer completes their payment plan in the future.