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The Test (sandbox) merchant is a merchant with no credentials that never charges anyone. Use it to try a funnel from the first page to the thank-you page before you connect a real payment processor: the checkout, order bumps, one-click upsells and downsells, course access, order emails, automations, subscription renewals and refunds all work. Every order it takes is a test order. You pay with test card numbers, and only test card numbers: a real card is refused.

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Create a Test merchant

  1. Go to Settings → Merchants → Create Merchant.
  2. In Gateway, pick Test (sandbox) and give it a name.
  3. Click Create & Configure.
  4. Pick the Checkout Page your funnel uses and click Save.
There are no keys to enter. The yellow box on the merchant shows the test cards and what runs for a test order. Then make it the merchant of the domain or funnel you are testing (Settings → Domains, or the funnel’s merchant setting), the same way you would pick Stripe or NMI.
Use the Test merchant only on domains and funnels you are testing. Anyone who reaches a checkout that uses it can finish the order with a test card and get what it sells for free, including course access. Switch the domain or funnel to your real merchant before you send traffic.

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Test cards

Enter any future expiry date (for example 12/30) and any CVC. The other numbers from Stripe’s test card list work too and give the same result as on Stripe (for example 5555 5555 5555 4444 is an approved Mastercard). Any other card number is refused before anything is recorded, and an expiry date in the past is refused.

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The checkout card form

A checkout using the Test merchant shows plain card fields (card number, expiry, CVC) instead of the Stripe or NMI card element, because there is no gateway to load it from. Everything around the card is the same as with a real processor: when the page has no ZIP field of its own, the card panel adds the same Country and ZIP / postal code fields it shows with NMI and Stripe, so a page tests the way it will run in production. A course or download checkout needs no shipping fields; see Digital products.

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What a test order does

A test order made through the Test merchant runs the same steps as a paid order, so you can check the whole funnel:
  • the thank-you page, the order bump and the order total;
  • one-click upsells and downsells, charged to the test card saved at checkout;
  • course access for the products bought, and the welcome and order emails;
  • automations that start on a purchase;
  • subscriptions: the renewal charges the saved test card on its date, and the renewal emails go out;
  • refunds and voids from the order page.
Some steps never run for it, because nothing was paid:
  • it is left out of revenue, analytics and reports, like any test order;
  • nothing is sent to a fulfillment provider;
  • no affiliate postback, no ad platform conversion (Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and the others) and no tracker postback;
  • no sale is sent to a call center, no stock is taken and no processing fee is charged.
Your merchant’s own postback URLs still fire, with "test": true in the payload.

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Moving to a real processor

When the funnel works, create your real merchant (Stripe, NMI, Authorize.Net or another) and switch the domain or funnel to it. To keep testing on a live merchant afterwards, use its Test Key.