Coinbase Commerce is a new payment platform developed by Coinbase that is designed to enable online businesses to accept Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin payments. The platform can be integrated with Shopify, which is one of the largest e-commerce platforms, with the development team working on adding compatibility for more platforms in the future.
Merchants are in control of their own crypto wallets, which can be accessed through the Coinbase Commerce interface. Here, users can also add domains that they want to use on the platform, get codes to embed payment widgets, access and create API keys, setup payment notifications and create custom checkouts. In our Coinbase Commerce tutorial below we will delve into these features a little deeper and test some of them out!
Contents
Part 1: How to Create a Coinbase Commerce Account
- Go to the Coinbase Commerce website and enter the email and password for your account. We suggest using a password manager browser extension, such as LastPass, to generate and store a random password.
- Click the link in the confirmation email, then hit ‘Continue to Dashboard’.
- Next click the ‘Secure Account’ button to setup two-factor authentication. You will need to download an authenticator app on your mobile, such as Google Authenticator. Once downloaded, scan the QR code, enter the 6 digit pin and click ‘Confirm’.
- On the following window, click ‘Secure Your Funds’. Here you will be given a 12 word recovery phrase for backing up your account. It is essential you write this down and store it somewhere safe, as if you lose it you will not be able to restore your account. Verify your phrase and you are all set!
- You can now login to your account and view your dashboard, where you can check balances, see incoming payments and create checkouts – more on this below.
- Login to your account, click settings on the left hand navigation bar and scroll down to ‘Whitelisted Domains’. Click ‘Whitelist a domain’.
- Enter the website you want to embed the button on and click ‘save’.
- Next click ‘accept payments’ in the navigation bar. Here you can choose between creating a Coinbase Commerce button to sell a product or a button to accept donations.
- Click whichever suits your needs, then fill out all the information in the following page and upload a picture of your product or a logo if you are accepting donations. Click next and select if you want to collect name and/or email from your customers.
- Your crypto checkout is now ready! In the next window you can choose between a link to a permanently hosted checkout or a code to embed your button into your website. Click embed and copy the code, then paste it into the text editor on your website.
- Congratulations, you have successfully embedded a Coinbase Commerce button to start taking crypto payments! We have created one below so you can test out how it looks and works.
Part 3: How to Add Coinbase Commerce to Shopify
- Login to your account, click settings on the left hand navigation bar and scroll down to API keys.
- Click create an API key, then click reveal to show it. Be sure to keep this key secret as it allows programming access to your account!
- Login to your Shopify account, navigate to settings, then click ‘Payment providers’.
- From the drop down menu, click Coinbase Commerce.
- Enter your Coinbase Commerce email and paste in the API key. You can also choose which cryptos you want to accept.
- Hit save and crypto payments will now automatically appear in your Shopify checkout alongside your other payment channels.
The interface is still quite basic right now, but we expect many more developments from the Coinbase team in the future. We will be sure to update our Coinbase Commerce guide as and when updates are released, so stay tuned!