Shopify Store Credit: API Use Cases, Subscription Innovation & Practical Guidance

As customer acquisition costs climb and retention becomes ever more critical to profitability, ecommerce brands are looking for new ways to incentivise loyalty, add value to transactions, and deliver frictionless experiences across touchpoints.

Shopify’s Store Credit API, now available to retailers using New Customer Accounts, offers a powerful tool for achieving all three.

More than a payment method, store credit is a flexible mechanism for strengthening your brand’s relationship with its customers. It enables you to allocate monetary value directly to customers’ accounts and allow them to redeem it at checkout, with no need for discount codes, third-party wallets or manual reconciliation.

This article introduces the Shopify Store Credit API, explores key use cases across different business models, and outlines implementation paths for Shopify Plus retailers. We also explore an example application for digital subscription brands, drawing on Swanky’s experience architecting complex credit-based redemption flows leveraging Shopify’s APIs.

Along the way, we’ll look at how the Store Credit API intersects with New Customer Accounts – a foundational upgrade that unlocks new customer experiences across retention, identity, and personalisation.

Introducing the Shopify Store Credit API

Shopify’s Store Credit API provides a first-party solution to allocate and manage monetary credit within the platform. Once assigned to a customer account, store credit can be used as a payment method at checkout, viewed within the customer’s account area, and tracked natively in reporting and analytics.

The Store Credit API enables you to:

• issue store credit to customer accounts manually or programmatically;

• display credit balances in the account page and at checkout;

• enable store credit as a payment method within Shopify Checkout; and

• track redemption activity using Shopify’s admin reports and APIs.

The solution is designed to be extensible. It can be paired with Shopify Functions, Cart and Checkout Extensions, and Customer Metafields to support complex use cases – from segmented eligibility to credit expiry logic.

However, a critical prerequisite is that your store must be using New Customer Accounts infrastructure, part of a major step forward for Shopify in terms of identity and account management. You can read more about these upgraded accounts and how they enhance the customer experience in our guide to New Customer Accounts. Shopify also offers official custom accounts documentation explaining their implementation.

Why store credit matters

Shopify’s Store Credit feature can replace discount codes in some scenarios, while also enabling entirely new engagement and retention strategies.

Its flexibility and native integration make it suitable for a wide variety of strategic initiatives, including:

1. Subscription credit as currency

Imagine a retailer selling digital subscriptions – whether that’s eBooks, audiobooks, streamable workouts, language lessons or guided meditations. Instead of delivering a fixed product each month, the retailer would likely need to allocate a monetary credit to the customer’s account, allowing them to redeem it on any product within a curated library.

This “credit as currency” model gives customers more control over what they receive, often leading to higher perceived value, increased satisfaction and lower churn. It also allows the brand to:

• differentiate subscription tiers (e.g. £5/month = 1 credit, £10/month = 3 credits);

• offer top-ups or add-ons to monetise power users (and potentially manage inventory levels of any physical stock through discounting and rewards); and

• simplify the buying journey by unifying one-time purchases and subscription redemptions.

At Swanky, we recently scoped a credit-based subscription system for a digital publisher operating on Shopify Plus. The brand wanted to allow active subscribers to redeem monthly credits on any digital title in their catalogue, creating a flexible, Netflix-style experience but with transaction-level control.

In this instance, Shopify’s Store Credit API provides a native, scalable solution that integrates cleanly with the platform’s checkout, customer account, and reporting infrastructure. We explore this use case in more detail later in the article.

2. Loyalty rewards & lifecycle incentives

Store credit also works well in loyalty programmes. Brands can issue credit that feels like cash (which is often more attractive and tangible than a points-based rewards system) and keep customers engaged within their store ecosystem.

Practical applications include:

• birthday rewards;

• post-purchase thank-you credits;

• referral bonuses;

• rewards for leaving reviews; and

• credit issued based on loyalty tiers or spend thresholds.

Because store credit is associated with a customer account, it reduces the risk of sharing or misuse (e.g. when using discount codes). It also enables a more consistent customer experience, particularly when integrated with New Customer Accounts and customer segmentation logic.

3. Customer service recovery

Every retailer faces the occasional delivery delay, damaged item or service hiccup. Store credit provides a low-friction way to offer goodwill gestures that drive future purchases. Examples might include:

• issuing a £10 credit for a missed delivery window;

• offering a partial credit for a returned product; and

• leveraging a credit as an apology for poor service.

Because it’s tracked in Shopify and tied to the customer account, the process of issuing and redeeming credit becomes operationally simple – no bespoke vouchers, no extra work for the customer, no risk of errors.

Example application: Building a credit redemption journey for digital subscriptions

To bring the potential of Shopify Store Credit to life, let’s imagine a digital subscription retailer selling online content – such as audiobooks or eLearning modules. The brand wants to offer customers a monthly credit allowance, redeemable on any item in its digital catalogue. Its goals include reducing churn, increasing perceived value, and maintaining high control over the UX for both subscribers and non-subscribers.

Working with a client in this space, Swanky scoped three possible implementation approaches; two leveraging the Store Credit API and New Customer Accounts, with a third offering alternative solutions based around ‘Classic’ Customer Accounts.

Option A: Shopify New Customer Accounts + Shopify Store Credit API + Shopify Checkout

The simplest and most scalable approach was to issue store credit via the API and allow customers to redeem it at Shopify Checkout. This option took full advantage of Shopify’s infrastructure:

• Credit balance is shown at checkout.

• Credit can be used as a payment method alongside standard options.

• Retailers can accurately track the use of credit in native Shopify reporting.

Recharge, used for subscription billing, triggered the issuance of credit via middleware that read each customer’s subscription tier and applied the correct credit value each month.

To support user journeys involving mixed carts (e.g. an audiobook plus a physical book), we scoped Cart Validation and Checkout UI Extensions. These ensured that credit could only be used when valid, and surfaced clear messaging when it wasn’t.

This approach was ideal for brands looking to stay as close to Shopify native as possible, reduce risk, and benefit from future platform updates.

Option B: Shopify New Customer Accounts + Shopify Store Credit API + Programmatic order creation

For a more frictionless experience – where users could “click to redeem” without entering a checkout flow – we explored bypassing checkout entirely. Here, credit redemption triggered a programmatic order via the Shopify Admin API, deducting credit and issuing the product instantly.

This created a Netflix-style flow: select an item, click “redeem”, receive access – better suited to digital-only products.

Advantages of this approach included full UX control and no friction from the checkout process.

However, the trade-offs were significant. Bypassing Shopify Checkout means forfeiting fraud protection, bot control, and scalability guarantees. It also introduces more infrastructure responsibility (e.g. security, load balancing) and can complicate reconciliation/reporting.

We advised starting with Option A, then layering on Option B selectively if performance data suggested it was worth the additional overhead.

Option C: Custom credit system (No Store Credit API)

If a retailer prefers credit that isn’t pegged to a monetary value (e.g. 1 credit = 1 audiobook), then Shopify’s native credit system may not be suitable. There are also circumstances where a retailer may not be wanting to upgrade to Shopify’s New Customer Accounts – either for technical reasons or because of time/cost investment.

In this case, we scoped a fully bespoke credit system consisting of:

• credit balance tracked in metafields;

• custom UI elements for redemption;

• validation logic on the frontend; and

• integration with Recharge (subscriptions) or other third-party systems to allocate credits.

While this offers maximum flexibility, it also duplicates functionality that Shopify now provides out of the box – increasing technical debt and cost. Deploying this option also risks compromising key features of the Shopify checkout:

• World-class security, including advanced bot protection and fraud analysis.

• Optimisation for performance and conversion (with a 15% higher conversion than competitors).

• Shopify’s infrastructure is geared for 99.9% uptime, with adaptive scaling for high throughput peak sales events.

• Advanced customisability, empowering the creation of powerful checkout experiences for customers.

• Localisation in over 50 languages, designed to increase global sales.

As with Option B, bypassing checkout introduces potential new risks with security and scalability that would need further analysis and validation.

In most cases, we recommend working with Shopify Store Credit API if possible, unless your use case simply cannot fit the 1:1 value model.

Implementing Shopify Store Credit: Key considerations

For brands thinking of leveraging the Shopify Store Credit API, this list nicely summarises the key considerations:

• Use of the Store Credit API requires New Customer Accounts to be enabled. Store Credit does not work with legacy accounts.

• Consider how credit is allocated. Will this be manual, triggered by subscriptions, or integrated with loyalty logic?

• Think through mixed carts. If only some products are credit-eligible, you’ll need validation rules and clear UX.

• Use Shopify Checkout Extensions. These allow dynamic messaging, conditional payment options, and upsell opportunities.

• Plan for reporting. Shopify natively tracks credit transactions, but additional custom reports may be needed for finance or customer experience (CX) teams.

• Test redemption logic. Especially when using Recharge, one-time purchases, or programmatic order creation.

Looking to explore Store Credit for your Shopify Plus store?

Shopify’s Store Credit API offers serious flexibility for brands focused on retention and CX. Whether you’re supporting digital subscriptions, building a loyalty programme or streamlining service recovery, credit-based systems can enhance CX and drive revenue – especially when implemented using Shopify’s native infrastructure.

Swanky’s work with subscription-first brands, combined with our experience in scalable Shopify architectures and New Customer Accounts, positions us to help retailers unlock the full value of this new capability. And as Shopify continues to evolve its APIs and core features, brands that invest in native solutions will be well-placed to stay ahead.

Get in touch with our solutions team to talk through your use case.