Ecommerce & Retail · Checkout & Payments
We built a standalone application to integrate the NMI payment gateway, bypassing native Shopify checkout limitations for a direct-to-consumer retailer.
Outcome
42% of orders routed through NMI on a standalone checkout that honours Shopify discounts.
For direct-to-consumer brands, the Shopify platform offers a reliable foundation for growth. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools for managing products, inventory, and customer data. However, its structured ecosystem can present significant constraints for businesses with specific operational needs.
A promising e-commerce retailer faced a critical barrier. Their business model depended on using the NMI payment gateway, a processor not natively supported by Shopify. This incompatibility was not a minor inconvenience-it was a fundamental obstacle that prevented them from processing any online sales and launching their business.
Our team was brought in to engineer a direct solution. We designed and developed a custom Shopify application that operates outside the native checkout flow. This application provides the specific payment integration the client required while maintaining a cohesive and trustworthy user experience.
The challenge
How we solved it
Technologies
The application’s core function is its direct integration with the NMI payment gateway. The Laravel backend securely communicates with NMI’s API to authorize and process transactions. This architecture gave the client the freedom to use their required payment processor, the central objective of the project, and 42% of orders now run through NMI.
To create a consistent user experience, the application makes real-time API calls to Shopify. When a customer enters an address or a discount code, our system instantly retrieves the correct shipping rates and confirms the code’s validity. This maintains the expected functionality of a native checkout and ensures order totals are always accurate.
How we built it
Built a standalone checkout that borrows Shopify's rules instead of reinventing them. Shopify checkout is closed, so taking payment through NMI meant a separate Laravel and React application that intercepts the journey before the final step. What made it safe was refusing to duplicate business logic: the checkout calls Shopify's APIs to revalidate discount codes and calculate tiered shipping for the real cart and address, so the two systems can never disagree. Payment authorisation runs server-side against NMI and card data never reaches the client. 42% of orders now go through that path.
In the client's words
“We needed NMI and Shopify wouldn't do it. About 42% of our orders go through the custom checkout and nobody has noticed.”
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