Smarter Net Terms on Shopify Plus: Seamless Fallback to Card Payments When Limits Are Reached

For more than seven years, our team has been building and refining B2B solutions for merchants on the Shopify platform, helping them deliver wholesale experiences that feel as seamless as their direct-to-consumer ones.

🤑 One area that frequently comes up is how to handle payment terms and credit limits effectively.

Let's discuss the B2B recommended flow and an improved version that allows B2B customers to "Pay" outright or use "Net terms" e.g. let them decide!

Shopify’s native company credit limits provide a strong foundation, yet they come with a notable constraint: once a customer reaches their allocated limit, they are prevented from completing any purchase unless they use net payment terms. There is no graceful fallback to standard payment methods, which can disrupt the buying experience.

We’ve developed a more flexible approach that empowers B2B customers to choose - on every order - whether to “Pay on Account” (using their approved net terms) or pay immediately with Shopify Payments or any other configured gateway.

Multiple payment options:

Fallback to card:

The implementation is straightforward yet powerful:

• Eligible customers see both payment options clearly presented at checkout.
• If the current order would exceed their remaining credit limit, the “Pay on Account” option is automatically hidden, allowing the purchase to proceed only via the standard gateway - preserving credit control without blocking the sale entirely.
• This small but meaningful improvement delivers a significantly better customer experience while maintaining the financial safeguards merchants need. 😍
• Prevents blocking the sale entirely. 🚀

If you’re exploring net terms alongside traditional payment options on Shopify Plus or refining your existing B2B setup, get in touch. We will be happy to provide a quote to set this up in your store.

If you are venturing into this alone, you need to consider all of Shopify touch points, so here is a flavour of what it looks like to deliver an approach with a better customer experience while maintaining strong credit control.

Here are the key components that are essential:

Shopify Flow

• Credit limit increases/decreases
• Company creation and automation
• Catalog assignment
• Order segmentation
• Custom order routing
• Invoice generation and delivery
• Customer tagging (critical for personalised email notifications, since B2B isn’t natively exposed in email templates)

Example credit increase:

Functions

• Payment method customisation
• Checkout UI extensions
• Checkout Blocks app - really useful to provide merchant access to key parts of the logic

Notifications

• Friendly, branded messaging for credit-eligible customers
• Customised B2B order confirmations, invoices, and shipping updates

Metafields

• Store company-specific data on the Company object (avoid attaching it to individual customers)

Shopify Admin Forms

• Streamlined trade account registration

Catalogs

• Tiered pricing and product visibility setup

Our team will be happy to discuss specifics or share more details with anyone exploring net terms alongside traditional payment options on Shopify. Get in touch today.