CommerceCommerce GlossaryPart 3 of 12
Storefront and Checkout Glossary
30 terms from the Commerce book's Storefront and Checkout part, each defined in a line and linked to the chapter that explains it.
- Accelerated checkout: a wallet or network (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Link, Amazon Pay) that supplies the email, address and payment credential in one step, after which shipping and tax must be recomputed for the address it returns (Cart & Checkout).
- Authorization window: how long a hold can be captured, the shorter of the network's limit and the processor's; stored as
capture_beforeand watched by the fulfillment queue (Taking Payment in Commerce). - Capture at fulfillment: charging the authorized card when goods ship rather than at checkout, so cancellations are voids and the customer pays for what they receive (Taking Payment in Commerce).
- Certified service provider (CSP): a tax engine certified under Streamlined Sales Tax whose services member states pay for on behalf of qualifying remote sellers (Sales Tax, VAT & Duties).
- Chargeback guarantee: a fraud vendor's promise to reimburse fraud chargebacks on orders it approved, conditioned on shipping to the screened address (Taking Payment in Commerce).
- Checkout: a versioned, expiring attempt to turn a cart into an order, holding contact, addresses, shipping quotes and the idempotency key the order and authorization share (Cart & Checkout).
- Checkout extensibility: a hosted checkout extended through UI extensions in named targets, functions at defined decision points and sandboxed pixels, in place of template edits (Cart & Checkout).
- DAP and DDP: Incoterms rules under which the buyer (Delivered at Place) or the seller (Delivered Duty Paid) clears and pays import duty and tax (Sales Tax, VAT & Duties).
- Delay notice: the Mail Order Rule's request for a buyer's consent to a later shipping date, with a right to cancel; silence counts only for a first notice with a definite date within 30 days (Consumer Protection Online).
- Economic nexus: a state's power to require sales tax collection once a remote seller's sales into it cross a threshold, most often $100,000 a year (Sales Tax, VAT & Duties).
- Exemption certificate: the buyer's signed claim that a sale is exempt (resale, government, nonprofit), accepted in good faith and kept as a document (Sales Tax, VAT & Duties).
- Faceted navigation: filter links on collection and search pages that create near-endless URL combinations, kept out of the crawl except for chosen indexable categories (Storefronts).
- Guest checkout: buying without an account; the guest is still a customer record matched by email (Cart & Checkout).
- Headless storefront: the merchant's own web application rendering pages from a platform's storefront API, usually handing checkout back to the platform (Storefronts).
- IOSS (Import One Stop Shop): the EU scheme for charging import VAT at checkout on consignments of €150 or less, reported monthly (Sales Tax, VAT & Duties).
- Legal guarantee (EU): the seller's minimum two-year liability for defects in goods, whatever any commercial warranty says (Consumer Protection Online).
- Mail Order Rule: the FTC rule requiring a reasonable basis for shipping promises, shipment within the stated time or 30 days, delay notices and prompt refunds (Consumer Protection Online).
- Marketing consent: a per-channel, append-only record of what a customer agreed to receive, with wording, source and time (Customers, Accounts & Privacy).
- Merchant listing (structured data): Google's Product and Offer markup for pages where the merchant sells the product, requiring a name, image, price above zero and currency (Storefronts).
- Multicapture: capturing one authorization in several pieces, one per shipment, with the final capture releasing the rest (Taking Payment in Commerce).
- OSS (One Stop Shop): the EU's single VAT return for intra-EU distance sales (Union scheme) and non-EU sellers' services (non-Union scheme), filed quarterly (Sales Tax, VAT & Duties).
- Redaction: deleting a customer's personal fields while keeping the order records that tax and accounting require (Customers, Accounts & Privacy).
- Remitter: who pays a tax line to the authority (the merchant, a marketplace, a merchant of record or nobody), recorded on each tax charge (Sales Tax, VAT & Duties).
- Right of withdrawal: the EU and UK consumer's right to cancel a distance purchase within 14 days of delivery for any reason, with a refund within 14 days (Consumer Protection Online).
- Shipping promise: any shipping time a shopper was shown, stored with its deadline and basis because the Mail Order Rule makes it binding (Consumer Protection Online).
- Shipping quote: an option shown at checkout with its price, promised arrival and expiry, the selected one being what the order charges and promises (Cart & Checkout).
- Storefront: a site or app presenting an online location's catalog, by theme or headless, with its domain, locale, price list and live release (Storefronts).
- Streamlined Sales Tax (SST): the multistate agreement on common definitions, sourcing, an exemption form and state-paid service providers, with 23 full members and one associate (Sales Tax, VAT & Duties).
- Theme: a template package the platform renders and hosts (Liquid on Shopify, Stencil on Commerce.com), arranged by merchants in an editor (Storefronts).
- URL redirect: a permanent mapping from a path a storefront once served to its replacement, written whenever a handle changes and kept forever (Storefronts).