Day 4: Get Paid and Set Up Shipping

Everything before today was decoration. Today is the part where a stranger trusts you with money and you promise them a parcel. It's also the day most half-built stores quietly die, because payment setup sounds harder than it is. It isn't. Give it half a day, then run the test order before you sleep. ## Connect your own gateway accounts Store by BirrCommerce supports **six payment gateways across cards, mobile money, and bank transfer** — and the money lands in **your own merchant accounts**, not a platform wallet you have to withdraw from later. That matters: no one holds your revenue hostage, and there's no extra payout cycle between the sale and your bank. Set up each method you can realistically support: - **Cards:** connect your card gateway account (through your bank or a processor you've registered with). This is what makes international and diaspora sales possible. - **Mobile money:** connect your mobile money merchant account. In many markets this isn't optional — for a huge share of customers it's the *default* way to pay, not the backup. A phone-accessory seller I know gets roughly 7 of every 10 orders through mobile money; the card option exists mostly for diaspora customers buying gifts back home. - **Bank transfer:** configure the instructions — account name, account number, reference format. Low-tech, never dies, and some buyers (especially on larger orders) simply prefer it. Registration for each gateway is a one-time slog with your bank or provider. Do it today, in parallel if you can, because approvals take days and Day 5 is launch day. > Customers don't abandon stores because a payment method is missing. They abandon when the method they *always use* is missing. Six gateways across the three families is how you stop guessing. ## Inline checkout: why it matters Checkout on BirrStore is **inline** — it happens on your own store's pages, in your own look, without bouncing the buyer out to a payment page that looks like a different website. This is not a cosmetic detail. The moment a buyer lands on a page that doesn't match your store, a percentage of them decide it's a scam. Especially on mobile. Especially the first time they buy from you. Inline checkout keeps the URL, the branding, and therefore the trust in one place, all the way to the receipt. Fewer exit points, fewer abandoned carts — and the design trust you built on Days 2 and 3 survives the moment of payment. **When a payment stalls, don't guess — look it up.** Every gateway has its own dashboard showing the transaction status. If a customer says they paid and the order says pending, check the gateway first, the order second, and only then reply to the customer. Half of "missing payments" in month one turn out to be mobile money confirmations that arrived after the customer closed the tab. Knowing where to look — gateway, then store — turns a panicked support message into a two-minute answer. ## Shipping zones without the headache Don't build a logistics empire today. Build zones: - **Zone 1 — your city:** flat rate, fast promise. "Same-day or next-day in Addis, 100 birr." Consider free delivery above a threshold (say, 1,500 birr) — it lifts average order size more than it costs you. - **Zone 2 — your country:** a flat rate per region or one national rate through your courier. Whatever the courier actually charges, plus a small buffer. Underestimating shipping is the classic first-margin-killer. - **Zone 3 — regional/international (optional):** only if you've actually priced a courier. It's fine to launch with zones 1 and 2 and add the world later. Write your shipping promise where customers will see it: delivery time and cost, on the product page and in the policy page you edited on Day 2. Vague shipping is the number one question in any store's inbox. Answer it before it's asked. ## Place one real test order — tonight Here is the part that feels unnecessary and absolutely is not: **place a real, small order on your own store and pay for it with your own money.** All the way through. Then refund yourself. - Buy with your **card**. Complete the inline checkout as a stranger would — no admin shortcuts. - Buy with **mobile money**. Confirm the push notification arrives, the confirmation flows back, and the order shows as paid. This is exactly where integrations quietly fail — a callback that doesn't return, a currency mismatch, a store stuck in "pending" forever. - Try **bank transfer** if it's part of your setup, and check the instructions read clearly from the buyer's side. - Check the **confirmation email**, the order in your admin, and the receipt from the gateway. One seller I know skipped this, launched, and discovered that mobile money confirmations failed on one specific mobile browser — for two weeks, orders sat "pending" while customers fumed. A 50-birr test order on Thursday would have caught it. **This part is boring; do it anyway.** ## Do this now - **Register and connect** your card, mobile money, and bank transfer gateways — money to your own accounts - **Confirm checkout is inline** and looks like your store on mobile - **Build 2–3 shipping zones** with honest flat rates and a delivery promise - **Place a real test order with each payment method** and refund yourself - **Verify the confirmation email and order status** flow end to end - **Fix or note every snag** — today is when snags are cheap Tomorrow is Day 5: opening the doors properly. The pre-launch checklist, your first email capture form, telling twenty real people, and what the first 48 hours actually look like — including what to do when nothing happens on day one.