Who Should Get Net 30? B2B Credit Applications on Shopify
Every guide to net terms on Shopify walks you through the same steps: open the company, find payment terms, pick Net 30, done. And since Shopify brought native net terms to every paid plan in 2026, that mechanical part really is that easy.
Which is exactly the problem. Assigning Net 30 takes thirty seconds. Deciding whether this buyer should have it is the part that determines whether you get paid — and it's the part the how-to guides skip, because Shopify has no feature for it.
TL;DR: Net terms are unsecured credit. Before assigning them, run an actual credit application: verified business identity, trade references, requested credit limit, and — for new or thin-file accounts — a personal guarantee. Start new accounts on prepayment or low limits and graduate them on payment history. Shopify assigns terms and tracks due dates; it does not enforce credit limits at checkout, chase overdue balances, or vet anyone. That layer is yours to build, and it starts with the application.
Net Terms Are a Loan
Strip the B2B vocabulary away and Net 30 is a 30-day, zero-interest, unsecured loan to a company you may have never spoken to. Framed that way, the standard advice — "offer net terms to increase conversion" — is obviously incomplete. Yes, purchasing departments buy on invoice, terms raise order values, and refusing terms loses real accounts. All true. None of it tells you which applicants would also have failed a five-minute credit check.
The merchants who do net terms well treat eligibility as a graduated privilege, not a checkout option.
The Credit Application: What to Actually Collect
A credit application is a structured request for the loan. At minimum:
| Section | What it establishes |
|---|---|
| Legal entity details + tax/registration ID | The borrower exists — verify against registries, don't take the form's word |
| Years in business, entity type | Thin file vs. established operation |
| Requested credit limit + expected monthly volume | Whether the ask is proportionate |
| Trade references (2–3 suppliers already extending terms) | Someone else already took this risk and got paid |
| Bank reference (optional, higher limits) | Capacity, not just history |
| Accounts-payable contact | Who you'll actually invoice and chase |
| Personal guarantee (new/thin-file accounts) | The owner shares the risk when the company can't demonstrate it |
| Signature + terms acceptance | The paper trail if it ever goes to collections |
Two design notes. Trade references are the highest-signal item per minute of effort — a supplier who's had a buyer on Net 30 for two years and been paid on time is better evidence than any form field. And the personal guarantee is less about ever enforcing it than about who declines to sign: a founder unwilling to guarantee their own company's $2,000 credit line has told you something.
Staged Terms Beat Binary Decisions
The strongest pattern is graduation, not gatekeeping:
Stage 1 — first orders prepaid. Every new account, no exceptions needed: cards or bank transfer up front while you learn whether they're real, whether they reorder, and whether their volume claim was honest.
Stage 2 — starter limit. After a few clean orders, Net 30 with a conservative cap. The cap does the risk work: your worst case is bounded.
Stage 3 — earned expansion. Raise limits on payment history — on-time invoices, growing volume — not on requests. History you've watched beats references you've phoned.
This maps cleanly onto Shopify: companies carry payment terms per location, so "prepaid" and "Net 30" are just states you move an account between. What Shopify won't do is the moving — there's no native credit-limit enforcement at checkout, no automatic block when a balance goes overdue, and no aging report. A buyer with an exhausted limit can place another terms order with zero friction unless your process (or tooling) intervenes. Know that gap before you scale past the number of accounts you can hold in your head.
Where This Sits in the Onboarding Flow
Credit vetting works best as a second gate, after account approval, not folded into the wholesale registration form. Registration answers "is this a real business that belongs in my catalog"; credit answers "how much unsecured exposure will I accept from them." Merging them front-loads friction onto applicants who'd happily prepay, and rushes a financial decision into an identity check. The clean sequence: register → verify → approve → order prepaid → apply for terms → graduate.
The application itself should be a proper artifact — a signed, timestamped record of what was claimed and requested — because if an account ever goes bad, the application is the document your collections effort stands on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I offer Net 30 to new wholesale customers? Not immediately, in most cases. First orders prepaid, then a low starter limit, then expansion on payment history — a graduation path loses very few good accounts and screens out most bad ones.
What should a B2B credit application include? Verified entity details, trade references, requested limit and expected volume, an AP contact, terms acceptance with a signature, and a personal guarantee for accounts without established history.
Does Shopify enforce credit limits on net-terms orders? No. Terms are assigned per company location and due dates are tracked per order, but nothing natively blocks a new order when the buyer's outstanding balance exceeds what you intended to extend.
Are trade references worth checking? Yes — they're the cheapest strong signal available. One phone call or email to a listed supplier confirms both the reference and the payment behavior; a buyer who can't name two suppliers extending them terms is telling you they're Stage 1.
B2B Onboard handles the gate in front of this one: verified wholesale registration and approval, with tax-ID checks against official registries — so by the time an account asks for terms, you already know they're real. See how it works.
Peer Jakobsen is the founder of Mentilead. He builds Shopify B2B apps from Denmark with a focus on clean architecture and EU compliance.