Building a sales channel with the Checkout API
Building a sales channel with the REST Admin API'sCheckoutresource or Storefront API'sCheckoutobject represents lower integration effort because Shopify makes it easy to handle the complexities of payment processing.
- Shopify offers a variety ofpayment processingoptions, depending on your business case and the needs of your app.
- Learn about payment processing with theREST Admin API.
- Shopify handles paying out to the merchant for you.
- Shopify keeps track of orders and fulfilments.
- Shopify handles disputes, refunds or cancellations.
If you want to direct customers who want to buy a specific product from the sales channel directly to a merchant's store checkout, you can build a sales channel withcart permalinks.
REST Admin API or Storefront API?
Anchor link to section titled "REST Admin API or Storefront API?"When you build a sales channel app, you can use theREST Admin APIorStorefront APIdepending on your business case and the needs of your app.
- You can use the REST Admin API to build an app that allows merchants to integrate products, orders, and customers with your channel.
- You can use the REST Admin and Storefront APIs to develop a mobile app builder by leveraging theMobile Buy SDKs.
Checkout creation and completion flow
Anchor link to section titled "Checkout creation and completion flow"Regardless of what API you choose, checkout creation and completion includes the following process:
- Obtain the line item data necessary to create the checkout object.
- Specify the shipping information (address, rate) and customer information.
- Complete the checkout using the one of the following methods:
- Shopify web checkout
- Third-party tokenization service (Stripe, Spreedly)
- Shopify card vault
In order to complete the checkout, the total price needs to be paid. The total price can change depending on duties, taxes, and discounts.