From $199/mo
Headless checkout means the page where the buyer pays is not rendered by your ecommerce platform. Your storefront still runs on Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce; the checkout runs somewhere you control, talks to your platform through its APIs, and to your payment provider through theirs. Here is what that buys you, what it breaks, and how to get it without building it.
In a standard store, the platform renders the checkout page, captures the card through its chosen gateway and creates the order. In a headless setup, a separate application does the rendering and the payment call, then creates the order in the platform through an API. The platform keeps products, inventory, customers, orders and fulfilment. The checkout keeps the buyer's attention and the card.
Shopify's Storefront API builds carts and can return a checkout URL, and the Checkout Kit lets a native app present Shopify's checkout in a sheet. In both cases the payment step is still Shopify's checkout with Shopify's gateway list. A truly headless payment step on Shopify means creating the order yourself through the Admin API after charging the card elsewhere, which is exactly what an own-domain checkout does. Without Plus and a provider-built payments app, that is the only way to put your own gateway behind a Shopify store. Own-domain checkout for Shopify.
WooCommerce is more open: the Store API exposes carts and checkout, gateways are plugins, and you can build a custom checkout page in the theme. What merchants still lack is a hosted, PCI-scoped card form that connects to gateways WooCommerce plugins do not cover, and routing between more than one processor. A hosted checkout on your subdomain with orders written back through the REST API covers both. WooCommerce own-domain checkout.
BigCommerce ships a Checkout SDK for custom checkout UIs and supports headless storefronts; Magento and custom carts have their own order APIs. The pattern is the same: cart on the platform, capture on the hosted checkout, order written back with a payment reference. If your platform can create an order through an API, it can sit behind a hosted checkout. Hosted checkout for any platform.
If none of those apply, the platform's native checkout is faster to run and better tested than anything custom.
| Concern | DIY headless | Hosted (CascadeCheckout) |
|---|---|---|
| Card data scope | Your problem | Tokenised by the gateway; SAQ A |
| Discount codes, shipping rates, taxes | Re-implement | Read from the platform, applied at checkout |
| Orders, inventory, apps | Write-back you maintain | Written back with line items, buyer, address, tags |
| Analytics and pixels | Re-wire | Meta, TikTok, GA4 events plus server-side CAPI |
| Gateway failover | Build it | Cascade across up to four routes |
| Time | Months | 24-48 hours after keys |
No. Headless commerce replaces the whole storefront with a custom front end. Headless checkout replaces only the checkout and payment step, leaving the storefront on the platform.
Shopify's own checkout cannot be replaced on non-Plus plans, but the payment step can be moved to an own-domain checkout that writes paid orders back through the Admin API. That works on every plan.
Apps that read orders keep working when the order is written back into the platform. Apps that inject into the native checkout page do not run on an external checkout.
No. CascadeCheckout hosts it, connects your gateways, and writes orders back to Shopify or WooCommerce.
Live in 24-48 hours. Founder-answered support on WhatsApp.
Own-domain checkout for Shopify → · WooCommerce own-domain checkout → · Hosted checkout page → · How it works →
CascadeCheckout is checkout software, not a payment service provider, bank or merchant-account seller. You contract with your own gateway or acquirer, disclose your real business category to them, and receive payouts from them. We never hold funds and we do not promise that any processor will approve you.