Offline Payment

Taking payment outside the checkout flow process

Sometimes it is convenient to offer payment methods where payment does not occur when the order is placed. Instead, they are dependant on an action which will occur outside the shopping cart ordering process. These are called offline payment methods.

Check/Money Order

If you offer check/money-order, then it’s up to the buyer to send the check to you. 

Naturally, you will typically wait for the check to arrive and clear your bank before shipping the goods.

This precaution also holds true for Bank Transfer, e-Transfer or Bank Deposit: you wait for payment before fulfilling the order.

The mechanism for doing this in Zen Cart is to set the Order Status for the Check/Money Order module to “Pending.” It should stay in this state until payment is received.

Note: The Check/Money Order module can be used for any payment method where transfer of funds does not take place within the checkout flow. For example, you can accept payment by Venmo simply by modifying the language defines in in ./includes/languages/english/modules/payment/moneyorder.php.

Alternately, you may clone the moneyorder payment module to build a Venmo module with its own rules and behaviors.

Other Built-In Offline payment methods

Zen Cart also offers the following built-in offline payment methods:

  • Cash On Delivery (COD)

Plugins for Offline Payment

Finally, plugins are available for other offline payment methods:




Still have questions? Use the Search box in the upper right, or try the full list of FAQs. If you can't find it there, head over to the Zen Cart support forum and ask there in the appropriate subforum. In your post, please include your Zen Cart and PHP versions, and a link to your site.

Is there an error or omission on this page? Please post to General Questions on the support forum. Or, if you'd like to open a pull request, just review the guidelines and get started. You can even PR right here.
Last modified March 29, 2024 by Scott Wilson (5152732).