About Payment Modules

What payment processing options are available?

Payment modules allow you to collect or arrange payment for an order.

The list of available payment modules may be seen by going to Admin > Modules > Payment.

Zen Cart has a number of built-in payment modules:

  • Authorize.net - AIM is available.
  • Check/Money Order - Receive payment by check
  • Cash on Delivery - COD or in-person payment
  • Free Order - required if you have free products in your store
  • PayPal - payment processing by PayPal

If you are just evaluating Zen Cart or running a test-only installation, then using the Check/Money Order module to process payments is the best option.

More payment modules may be found in the Payment module section of the Plugins Library.

Developers wishing to create a payment module should see the dev FAQs on modules.

If you don’t already have an account, please use these direct links to the payment processors Zen Cart supports. By signing up via one of our links, you help support the Zen Cart project with small commissions that these providers give back to Zen Cart. Thank you in advance.

Credit Card Payments

Some credit card payment modules, such as Square, provide onsite payment. The checkout payment page displays a form that captures the customer’s credit card details.

Square Payment Form

Other payment modules, like PayPal Express, collect payment offsite. They take the user to a form after checkout completion to collect payment, and pass the information back to Zen Cart. The checkout payment page shows a radio button, which the customer clicks to select that method of payment.

PayPal Express

Manual Credit Card Processing

In recent versions of Zen Cart, great care has been taken to handle payment details securely. This means that older methods of capturing credit cards, such as the cc and Ceon Manual Card modules, are no longer recommended. Read more about why you shouldn’t process credit cards manually.




Still have questions? Use the Search box in the upper right, or try the full list of FAQs. If you can't find it there, head over to the Zen Cart support forum and ask there in the appropriate subforum. In your post, please include your Zen Cart and PHP versions, and a link to your site.

Is there an error or omission on this page? Please post to General Questions on the support forum. Or, if you'd like to open a pull request, just review the guidelines and get started. You can even PR right here.
Last modified July 28, 2023 by Scott C Wilson (a5f3cf6).