Checkout

Overview

Where checkout starts and ends

Checkout starts after a customer decides to buy and moves from browsing or cart selection into the purchase flow. The business must establish an authoritative order total, including applicable discounts, delivery charges and taxes, before requesting payment. The amount shown in a browser should come from server-side order data rather than a customer-editable field. A checkout may end when a payment instruction is issued, when a verified payment succeeds, or when an order is accepted. Those are different events, so a merchant must define the exact completion point used by its systems and reports.

Crypto payment sequence

In a crypto checkout, the customer may choose a currency and network, receive an invoice or address, and approve a transfer in a wallet. The merchant then needs independently verified payment evidence. A success page, a wallet popup closing, or a redirect back to the store is not equivalent to blockchain confirmation. The order should keep its own identifier and reference the payment request, selected asset, network, expected amount, expiration and received status. This allows support and fulfillment systems to distinguish a pending transfer from a failed or completed purchase.

Failure and recovery

Expired quotes, wrong-network transfers, underpayments, duplicate clicks and temporary connection loss require different recovery paths. Retrying a failed browser request must not silently create another collectible invoice or charge. When a customer returns, show the existing order state where possible and offer a new payment attempt only when it is safe.

Useful measurement

Measure checkout starts, validation errors, abandoned sessions, verified paid orders and the time between each stage. Do not report a high checkout completion rate merely because users reached the last screen. The adjacent concept Checkout Validation covers checks performed before accepting a payment instruction.