Some customers are not one-off buyers. The reseller who orders every week, the regular who prefers to settle up monthly, the customer who pays a deposit and draws it down. Making each of them transfer separately every single time is friction for them and reconciliation work for you.
Whapick has a simple answer: store credit. You hold a balance for a specific customer, and they spend it on orders instead of transferring each time. This guide explains what it is, how to fund it, and how it behaves when an order is refunded.
What Store Credit Is (and Is Not)
Store credit is money you hold on behalf of one contact. It lives on that customer’s record, it belongs to your business, and it can only be spent with you. It is completely separate from your own wallet balance — the balance you use to pay for your subscription and top-ups — so funding a customer never touches your platform money, and vice versa.
Think of it as a tab you keep for someone. You put money on it; they draw it down with orders.
Funding a Customer’s Balance
Everything happens from your Contacts page. Each contact shows their current balance, and a Fund action opens their store credit panel. From there you can:
- Fund Balance — add money to their credit, with an optional note explaining why (a cash payment you received, a goodwill credit, a deposit).
- Deduct — take money back off the balance, for a correction or a withdrawal.
Every movement is written to a ledger on the same panel — the amount, the note, the date, and the balance after each entry. So there is never any “did I already credit them for that?” The history is right there.
Balances can only be spent, never overdrawn. A deduction that would take a customer below zero is refused, and a customer can only ever spend what is actually on their balance.
How a Customer Spends It
Nothing new for the customer to learn. When they place an order in your WhatsApp flow, Whapick checks their store credit first. If the balance covers the order, the order is paid instantly from that balance — no transfer, no waiting for a payment to land, no webhook. The customer is simply told the order was paid from their store balance, and it moves straight on.
If the balance only covers part of it, the order falls through to your normal payment flow exactly as it would for anyone else. There is no partial draw — it is either covered, or it is not.
When an Order Is Refunded
Because the payment came out of a balance, a refund goes back into it. If you cancel or fail an order that was paid from store credit, the amount is returned to that customer’s balance automatically. The same applies if the business itself refunds the order. The credit is returned once, never twice, even if the action is retried.
This is what makes store credit safe to use for real money: it is a closed loop. What goes in comes back to the same place, and the ledger records both directions.
Who Store Credit Is For
- Resellers who order frequently and would rather top up once than transfer per order.
- Regulars who pay you in cash or by transfer outside the system, and want it credited to spend later.
- Deposits — take a deposit now, let the customer draw it down as they order.
- Goodwill — credit a customer after a mix-up so they can spend it on their next order.
Store Credit vs Your Wallet
It is worth keeping the two straight, because they solve different problems. Your Wallet is your own money, used to pay Whapick for your subscription and credit top-ups; you fund it by transferring to a virtual account Whapick issues you. Store credit is a customer’s money that you hold, and it is only ever spent on orders with your business. One is how you pay the platform; the other is how a customer pays you.
If you want the full picture of your own balance and virtual accounts, see Wallet and billing explained.
Getting Started
Open Contacts, find the customer, and use Fund. Add what they have paid you, add a note, and you are done. The next time they order, the balance does the work. If you have not set up contacts yet, start with managing your contacts and groups — or create your free account and start holding credit for your best buyers today.