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Comment by TekMol | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to see an art creator based around buying credits.

Do you use Shopify for the order processing?

Yes I do, it's a bit of a hangover from the original business model of buying prints. Stripe would potentially be better for credits.

Cool. I never used Shopify. Didn't know you can use them to sell digital goods.

Do you have to integrate your own payment or do they handle it all for you? Do they collect the money from users and then send it to you once per month? Do they handle the tricky parts like dealing with VAT per country?

I basically use the API to create a checkout specific to the user's order, then listen to the webhook to fulfill the credits. Gateways are Shopify and PayPal. Shopify payments are in my bank account in a couple of days.

What does "Gateways are Shopify and PayPal" mean?

Do you need a PayPal account and dabble with their API to set up this type of solution?

Or is a Shopfiy account enough?

Shopify lets you choose which payment options you'll let customers check out with. Examples are Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, Google Pay, etc. A Shopify account is enough to get started, you won't need to dabble with any APIs.

However, if you're wanting to sell digital products, it may not be the best option for you. I've had to do a bit of extra work to get it to work for my situation.

Thanks. So at least in theory it is possible to just set up a Shopify account and start selling digital goods. Good to know. But yes, I would probably try Stripe first.

Aren't your prints also like digital goods? I would expect you do not print them yourself but forward the image and order data to some whitelabel printing solution?

Yeah we do use a print on demand service, and the main reason we use Shopify at all is because the printer (Printful) has a good Shopify app that handles all the product syncing and fulfillment automatically.

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