Pre-Order Deposits on Shopify: Collect Partial Payment

A pre-order deposit is a partial upfront payment — usually 20% to 50% of the price — that a shopper pays to reserve a product before it ships, with the remaining balance charged automatically at fulfillment. Collecting a deposit instead of nothing gives buyers real commitment, which lowers both checkout abandonment and pre-order cancellations.

Upfront cost is exactly the friction a deposit is built to remove. The average online shopping cart abandonment rate sits at 70.22%, and once you set aside shoppers who were only browsing, the single biggest reason people abandon checkout is “extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees),” cited by 40% of them (Baymard Institute, updated September 2025). A pre-order deposit attacks that barrier head-on: it swaps one large payment for a small, low-risk one, so a shopper who isn’t ready to hand over the full amount can still commit today.

What is a pre-order deposit?

A pre-order deposit is a partial payment collected at checkout to reserve a not-yet-available product, with the balance charged later — most often on the day the item ships. It sits between the two extremes merchants usually choose from: charging the full price now (maximum commitment, maximum hesitation) or taking no payment at all on a “notify me” waitlist (zero friction, zero commitment).

That middle position is the whole point. A free waitlist signup costs the shopper nothing, so it predicts almost nothing about whether they’ll actually buy. A full-price pre-sale months before delivery asks for total trust in a product that doesn’t exist yet. A deposit captures genuine intent without demanding the entire amount up front — the buyer has skin in the game, and you have a validated order plus working capital.

Deposits are a native concept on Shopify, not a workaround. Shopify’s own documentation states that with pre-orders, “you can collect full, partial, or no payment at the time the customer places their order” (Shopify Help Center). The “partial” option is the deposit: Shopify shows the amount due at checkout and holds the customer’s payment method to collect the rest later.

How do pre-order deposits reduce cancellations?

Deposits reduce cancellations because a customer who has already paid money is psychologically and financially invested in following through. A no-payment reservation is easy to walk away from; a paid deposit is a small loss you have to actively accept before you cancel.

The pre-order platform PreProduct, which analyzed more than 1 million pre-orders worth over $85 million, found an average pre-order cancellation rate of just 5.4% (PreProduct). As the same team puts it, “having ‘skin in the game’ through a deposit makes them more likely to complete the purchase compared to waitlists or notification systems with zero commitment” (PreProduct’s deposits guide). Pre-order buyers, in other words, are not flaky window-shoppers; they’re among your most committed customers, and a deposit sharpens that commitment.

Timing also matters. When you collect a deposit now and the balance at fulfillment — rather than the full amount months early — you shrink the window in which a shopper can get cold feet before you’ve been paid in full. Shopify makes the same point about charging on fulfillment: the approach “reduces the risk of refunds from shoppers who change their minds before fulfillment, since they’re not charged until their order is processed” (Shopify, November 2025).

Proactive communication compounds the effect. In that same guide, Mark Rushmore, co-founder of the electric-toothbrush brand Suri, describes handling a delayed pre-order by keeping customers informed and only charging them appropriately: “We didn’t have a single refund as a result of that.” A deposit gives you the committed order; clear delivery-date communication keeps it from unravelling.

Deposits work best when the checkout around them is clean. See how Kedra Checkout Rules keeps pre-order deposit carts tidy — free, on any Shopify plan.

Pre-order deposit vs. BNPL vs. full prepayment

Merchants often confuse a deposit with buy now, pay later (BNPL). They feel similar to a shopper — “pay less now” — but the mechanics, the money, and the risk are completely different. A deposit is a partial payment made to you to reserve an item. BNPL is an installment loan from a third-party lender for the full price. Full prepayment is the whole amount paid to you at checkout.

That distinction is not cosmetic. With Shopify’s BNPL option, Shop Pay Installments, the lender Affirm carries the customer: “Affirm is responsible for collecting installment payments from your customers,” and you “receive full payment for your order within 1 to 3 business days” (Shopify Help Center). The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes BNPL as “typically a four-payment loan with no interest used by consumers to make retail purchases” (CFPB, December 2025). A deposit involves no lender and no financing — just you, a partial charge now, and a balance charge later.

	Pre-order deposit	Buy now, pay later (BNPL)	Full prepayment
Who holds the money	You (the merchant)	A third-party lender (e.g., Affirm)	You (the merchant)
Shopper pays now	A partial amount (e.g., 20–50%)	An installment of the full price	100% of the price
When you’re paid	Deposit now, balance at ship	In full, within 1–3 business days	In full, at checkout
Who carries default risk	You (the balance charge can fail)	The lender	None once paid
Best fit	Reserving pre-orders & made-to-order	Affordability on in-stock items	Simple, high-trust pre-sales

Use each for what it’s built for. BNPL helps shoppers afford in-stock items they’d buy today. Full prepayment suits confident, near-term pre-sales where cash flow to fund production matters most. A deposit is the tool for reserving something that ships weeks or months out, when you want commitment without scaring off the buyer — and it keeps the customer relationship, and the balance, entirely on your store.

How to set up pre-order deposits on Shopify

Here’s the accurate version, because it’s easy to get wrong: Shopify’s platform supports deposits, but you can’t switch them on from the standard admin. The deposit engine — Shopify calls it deferred purchase options, built on selling plans — is exposed to apps, so you configure it by installing a pre-order or deposit app. Shopify is explicit: “To use pre-orders, you need to install a pre-order app from the Shopify App Store and then manage pre-orders in the Shopify admin” (Shopify Help Center).

Once you have a pre-order/deposit app installed, the setup follows this pattern:

Confirm your payment provider. Pre-order deposits are “currently only available to merchants using Shopify Payments or Paypal Express” (Shopify Help Center). Your gateway must be one of these to hold the card and charge the balance later.
Create a pre-order selling plan on the product (or variant) you’re launching, and choose partial payment as the option. With a partial deposit, “the deposit amount that’s due at checkout is displayed in the order summary, and the remaining amount is due at a later date” (Shopify Help Center).
Set the deposit amount — a percentage or fixed value of the price (see the sizing section below).
Schedule the balance charge. Shopify’s deferred options let you charge “on a specific date” or a set number of days after checkout, and each order “can have only one deferred payment due date” (Shopify.dev). Point it at your expected dispatch date so the balance lands as you ship.
Publish the pre-order and test it end to end. Place a real test order, confirm the deposit is what’s charged now, and verify the balance is scheduled correctly before you promote the launch. Our checkout rules QA checklist is a good template for that final pass.

Two limits are worth knowing up front, because they shape the checkout rules you’ll want around deposits: deferred purchases can’t use local payment methods, and only one deferred due date is allowed per order (Shopify.dev). Both are why a clean, controlled deposit cart matters — more on that below.

How big should a pre-order deposit be?

There’s no single “correct” deposit percentage, but there is clear directional consensus among pre-order specialists: start conservative and scale with price and risk. PreProduct puts the useful band at “10–50% of the product value,” while others recommend starting around 20–30% and testing upward. The guiding principle is that the deposit should feel like a step, not a wall.

A few practical rules to size and frame it well:

Scale inversely with price. Higher-ticket items usually convert better at a lower deposit percentage (a smaller absolute number still feels safe); lower-priced items can carry a higher percentage or a flat fee.
Decide refundability before launch, and say it plainly. Some stores keep deposits fully refundable until shipping when timelines are uncertain; others make them non-refundable past a cutoff to protect a production run. Either is fine — pick one and state it on the product page.
Give a specific delivery window, not “ships soon.” Vague promises are what turn committed buyers into cancellations. “Estimated to ship by March 15” beats “coming soon” every time.
Mind the legal clock. In the US, the FTC’s Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule requires you to ship within the time you promise — or within 30 days if you state none — or offer buyers the option to cancel for a refund, as Shopify’s pre-order guide notes. Your deposit and delivery-date copy should reflect that.
Schedule the balance to dispatch and send a heads-up. Charge the remaining amount when the product actually ships, and email customers before you charge the card on file so the second payment is never a surprise.

For deeper strategy on running the campaign itself, see our guides on maximizing sales with Shopify pre-orders and using partial payments on high-ticket products.

Keep pre-order deposit carts clean with Kedra Checkout Rules

The deposit app collects the money. What it doesn’t do is police the rest of the cart — and pre-order deposit carts have specific ways of going wrong. This is where a checkout-rules layer earns its place. To be clear about what it is: Kedra Checkout Rules doesn’t collect deposits. It’s a free Shopify Functions app that hides, renames, reorders, and validates payment and shipping methods using 50+ conditions (cart total, product, tag, country, weight, date), and it sits on top of whatever deposit setup you run.

Three deposit-specific problems it solves:

Block mixed pre-order + in-stock carts (validation). Because Shopify allows only one deferred payment due date per order, combining a deposit item with a ship-now item — or two pre-orders with different dates — creates split-shipment and balance-timing confusion. A cart validation rule can require pre-order products to check out on their own, keeping every deposit order clean. It’s the same conditional logic merchants use to enforce eligible carts at checkout.
Hide payment methods that can’t carry a balance. Deferred purchases can’t use local payment methods, and the balance charge needs a card Shopify can bill later. Hide cash on delivery, manual bank transfer, and gift cards on deposit carts so shoppers can only complete on a chargeable method — the same pattern we describe for enforcing rebillable methods on subscription carts and hiding one-time methods for recurring products.
Rename and reorder for clarity. Relabel a shipping option to “Pre-order dispatch — ships March 2026,” reorder methods so the deposit-friendly card option shows first, and remove any choice that doesn’t apply to a reserved item. Clearer options mean fewer confused, abandoned checkouts.

Set the rules once with point-and-click conditions — no Liquid, no Scripts, no Shopify Plus — and they fire automatically whenever a pre-order product is in the cart, while normal in-stock carts stay untouched.

Make every deposit order a clean one. Install Kedra Checkout Rules free and add pre-order cart rules in minutes. Browse the full Kedra Shopify apps to layer on more checkout logic.

Frequently asked questions

Does Shopify let you take a deposit at checkout?

Yes, at the platform level — though not from the standard admin alone. Shopify’s pre-order options can collect “full, partial, or no payment” at checkout, and the partial option is the deposit. You install a pre-order app to configure it, and your store must use Shopify Payments or PayPal Express to charge the balance later.

How much should a pre-order deposit be?

There’s no universal number, but pre-order specialists suggest a range of roughly 10–50% of the price, with a conservative 20–30% a common starting point. Scale it inversely with price — smaller percentages on high-ticket items, larger on cheaper ones — then test. The deposit should feel like a low-risk step to reserve, not a second full checkout.

Are pre-order deposits refundable?

That’s your policy to set, and you should state it clearly before launch. Many stores keep deposits refundable until the item ships (useful when timelines are uncertain), while others make them non-refundable past a cutoff to protect a committed production run. Whichever you choose, publish it on the product page and honor the FTC’s shipping-and-refund timing rules for delayed orders.

Is a pre-order deposit the same as buy now, pay later?

No. A deposit is a partial payment made to you to reserve a product, with the balance charged later. Buy now, pay later is a full-price installment loan from a third-party lender like Affirm: it pays you in full within days, then collects from the customer. A deposit keeps the money on your store.

Can I collect a pre-order deposit without Shopify Plus?

Yes. Pre-order deposits run on Shopify’s standard pre-order/purchase-options infrastructure via an app, on regular plans — no Plus required. The same is true of checkout-rule tools: apps built on Shopify Functions, like Kedra Checkout Rules, hide and validate payment and shipping methods on any plan, so you can keep deposit carts clean without upgrading.

What happens if the balance payment fails?

Shopify charges the balance automatically on the scheduled date using the stored payment method, but a card can expire or decline before then. Reduce the risk: ensure the deposit was paid on a chargeable card, email customers before the balance charge, and have a process for failed charges — the same discipline that prevents failed subscription payments.

Start collecting deposits — and protect every order

Pre-order deposits turn hesitation into committed revenue: they lower the upfront cost that drives most checkout abandonment, give buyers the “skin in the game” that cuts cancellations, and hand you working capital and validated demand before you produce a thing. Set the deposit with a pre-order app on Shopify Payments or PayPal Express, size it conservatively, schedule the balance to dispatch, and communicate delivery dates clearly.

Then protect those orders at checkout. A deposit app collects the partial payment; Kedra Checkout Rules keeps the cart around it clean — blocking mixed pre-order carts, hiding methods that can’t carry a balance, and relabeling options so shoppers know exactly what they’re reserving. Install Kedra Checkout Rules free and make every deposit order a clean one.