B2B and wholesale
Payment terms
Payment terms in Shopify B2B are the window a company has to pay an order: immediately, net 30, 45 or 60, or on receipt. They are assigned to the company or the location, and they let the buyer complete an order without entering a card.
Also called: net 30, deferred payment, credit terms
This is the feature that turns a cart into a real wholesale order. A professional buyer does not pay by card: they have an agreement and they pay on terms against an invoice.
What changes at checkout
With terms assigned, checkout offers to complete the order without taking payment. The order lands as payment pending with its due date, and collection is handled afterwards. For the front-end that means the pay button is not the end of the flow: the end is a confirmed order the buyer can download.
Where it shows in the front-end
Two places, and both get forgotten:
- The cart. If the buyer knows they are paying in 60 days, saying so in the cart cuts abandonment far more than any trust badge.
- The account area. A buyer on deferred payment logs in to see what is outstanding and when it is due. If that is missing, they phone and ask.
What it does not solve
It is not credit control. Shopify stores the term, not the risk: there is no credit limit that stops an order when the company already owes too much. If that is needed it comes from the ERP, and it enters the project as an integration or as a cart validation.
Detail in the payment terms documentation.