Shaping the Future of Payments in the Browser - Shopify

What this post added

This post details Shopify's initial experiment with the Payment Request API to improve browser-based checkout experiences. It outlines the project's definition, hypothesis (market readiness, unchanged or improved CCR, better/faster purchase experience), and A/B experiment setup. Key technical contributions include: defining merchant and audience eligibility criteria, segmenting users into control and experiment groups, integrating the experiment into an isolated Ruby app using Shopify's Rails engine and REST Admin API, injecting JavaScript via script tags, overriding the 'checkout' button, and interacting with Shopify's Checkout API. It also addresses the challenge of supporting discount codes and gift cards by providing opt-out flows. The post introduces Payment Request API terminology like `canMakePayment()` and `basic-card`.