One good practice when owning an Ecommerce business powered by Shopify, is to test credit card payments and their possible transaction scenarios.

In order to test a credit card payment, we must simulate a transaction which would imply placing and order –in this case it would be a test order, but first, we need to set up what is called the Bogus Gateway, which is a payment provider that every store can use, and with which every order will be a test order.

Setting up the Bogus Gateway

To set up the Bogus Gateway will follow these steps:

  1. From the Shopify admin page, go to Settings > Payments.
  2. If we have a credit card payment provider enabled, we’ll deactivate it before continuing. Click Manage > Deactivate (this button also shows the name of our payment provider, for example Deactivate Shopify Payments), then confirm deactivation.
  3. Do one of the following:

  4. If Shopify Payments are enabled:

    • In the Shopify payments section, click Manage.
    • At the bottom of the page, click Switch to a third-party provider, and then click Switch to a third-party provider again to confirm.
  5. If Shopify Payments are not enabled, then in the Shopify payments section, click See all other providers.
  6. If Shopify Payments is not available in our country, then in the Payment providers section, click Choose a provider.
  7. Select (for testing) Bogus Gateway from the list.
  8. Click Activate (for testing) Bogus Gateway.
  9. Click Save.
  10. From our online store, we’ll place an order as a customer would, and at checkout, enter the following credit card details instead of genuine numbers:
Field name Details to enter
Name on card Enter Bogus Gateway
Credit card number Enter each of these in turn to simulate different types of transaction:
CVV Enter any 3-digit number (for example, 111.)
Expiry Date Enter any date in the future.

Now we’re ok to go and place our test order.

The test order purchase will always need to amount to a number equal or greater than 1 US Dollar, or its equivalent in any other currency.

We can follow these steps if we’d like to deactivate the Bogus Gateway after performing our tests.

  1. After we’re done testing, click Manage next to (for testing) Bogus Gateway in our Shopify admin.
  2. Click Deactivate (for testing) Bogus Gateway to remove this gateway from our checkout.

Conclusion

We’ve learned how to test credit card payment by using a Bogus Gateway which will process our test order payments. For security concerns, we’ve also specified how to deactivate that gateway after we’re done with our payments testing.