What is Text-to-Buy Checkout?

Text-to-Buy Checkout refers to the complete transaction flow that occurs when a customer replies to a text message to purchase a product. Unlike traditional ecommerce checkout — which involves a cart, shipping forms, payment entry, and order review — Text-to-Buy Checkout compresses the entire process into a single reply.

When a customer replies "YES" or a quantity to a product text, the platform processes payment using the customer's stored method, creates the order, and syncs it to the brand's ecommerce system for fulfillment. The customer receives a confirmation text within seconds. No page loaded. No form filled out. No link clicked.

The first-time checkout experience is the one exception: new buyers complete a one-time secure checkout on the brand's subdomain to store their payment method (with Apple Pay and Google Pay support). After that, every future purchase is a text reply.

The checkout flow varies based on whether the customer has purchased via text before. For returning buyers, the flow is simple: they reply to the product text, the platform verifies their identity via phone number, charges their stored payment method, and creates the order. The entire process takes seconds.

For first-time buyers, the platform sends a link to a branded checkout page hosted on the merchant's subdomain. The customer enters payment details once — with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and credit card options available. These details are stored securely for future text purchases. From that point forward, every purchase happens by reply.

Behind the scenes, the platform handles variant selection (if the product has sizes, flavors, or colors), shipping address confirmation, order creation in Shopify, inventory management, and confirmation messaging — all orchestrated through the text conversation.

Traditional checkout is where purchases go to die. On mobile, 67% of shopping carts are abandoned. Every field to fill, every page to load, every step to complete is a drop-off point. Text-to-Buy Checkout eliminates all of these friction points for returning buyers.

The result is dramatically higher conversion. Text-to-Buy campaigns convert at 5.5% on average, compared to 0.12% for SMS campaigns that link to traditional checkout pages. That's a 46x improvement, driven almost entirely by removing checkout friction.

Text-to-Buy Checkout also provides clean attribution. Every order is tied to the specific text that generated it — no click tracking, no attribution models, no ambiguity about which channel drove the sale.