Commerce
Selling digital products without a payment gateway
Gateways are not available or affordable everywhere. A manual-review order workflow can be safe — if you design the state machine properly.
By Liaqat Ali Khan · · 5 min read
Plenty of businesses cannot use Stripe or similar gateways in their region, or simply do not want the fees at launch. Bank transfer and wallet payments work, but the order flow has to be designed so that nobody receives a download before money is actually confirmed.
The order state machine
- pending — the order was created and payment instructions shown
- payment_review — the buyer says they have paid; an admin must verify funds
- paid — funds confirmed in the receiving account
- fulfilled — download entitlement created and emailed
- cancelled / refunded — terminal states
Rules that keep it honest
- A screenshot is a claim, not proof. Only verified funds move an order to paid.
- Every transition logs who did it, when, and why.
- Fulfilment is idempotent: running it twice never creates two entitlements.
- Download links are short-lived and tied to the order, never permanent public URLs.