Payment links

Crate vs payment link storefronts

A payment link takes money. That is a genuinely useful thing and the correct first step for most businesses. It is not a shop, and the difference shows up the first month you sell out of something.

What a payment link storefront is: A page of payment links generated by a payment provider so a buyer can pay without a transfer.

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Is a payment link storefront enough to run a shop?

A storefront built from a payment provider's links solves collection: a buyer can pay you without sending a transfer screenshot, and that is worth having on day one. What it does not do is run a shop. It holds no stock count, so it will happily sell the last item twice. It holds no order state, so the difference between paid, packed and delivered lives in your head. It holds no customer, so there is no repeat marketing. Crate keeps the payment collection and adds the shop around it: stock that moves when something sells, orders with states, customers with history, delivery, staff, and a storefront on your own domain.

Side by side

Qualitative and stable. No prices and no fee percentages for either side, because both change without notice and a comparison table carrying a stale number is worse than no table.

Crate compared with a payment link storefront, by dimension.
What	Crate	A payment link storefront
Collecting money	Card, transfer and USSD, through more than one provider.	Yes. This is what it is for and it does it well.
Stock counts	Yes. Selling the last one removes it everywhere.	No. Nothing decrements.
Order states	Paid, packed, shipped, delivered and refunded, with a history.	A payment succeeded, or it did not.
Customers	A record per customer with their order history.	A list of payments.
Delivery	Rates, zones and courier booking.	Arranged outside the tool.
Your own storefront	A designed store on your own domain.	A provider-branded page of links.
Staff	Roles and per-staff permissions.	One account holder.

Which one you actually want

Both columns are real. If the right-hand one describes you, take it: a product that does not fit you is a refund with extra steps.

Choose Crate if

You sell often enough that overselling has already happened, or is about to.
You cannot say from the tool which orders are still unshipped.
You want repeat customers to be reachable rather than anonymous.
You want the shop to look like your business, on your own domain.

Choose a payment link storefront if

You sell occasionally, to order, and stock is not a real concept for you.
You need to take one payment today and nothing else.
Your catalog is small enough to hold in your head and it is not growing.

Where Crate is behind

Every comparison on this site carries this section. A page that only lists what we do better is an advert, and you already know how much to trust one of those.

Where Crate is behind: nothing to set up. A payment link takes a minute and costs nothing until you sell. Crate is a platform you configure, and for a business that sells occasionally that is effort with no return. Payment links are the right answer at that volume. The point at which they stop being the right answer is the point at which you start counting stock.

About switching to Crate from a payment link storefront

Short answers, and none of them hedge. If yours is not here, ask us on the contact page.

Do I have to stop using my payment provider?

No. Crate connects to payment providers rather than replacing them, so you keep the same settlement account and add the shop around it.

Can I keep taking bank transfers?

Yes. Transfer is a supported payment method alongside card and USSD.

How this comparison is kept honest

Last checked September 03, 2026

Everything said about a payment link storefront here is a qualitative property of the product taken from what a payment link storefront publishes about itself: what kind of product it is, which channels it sells through natively, and which capabilities it ships rather than leaves to an add-on. We publish no prices, fees, percentages or counts for any competitor, including ourselves, on these pages, because those change without notice and a table carrying a stale number does more damage than no table.

Claims about Crate on this page do not go beyond what our own feature, pricing and security pages already state. Where they would, they are not made.

Product capabilities change. This page states what was accurate on the date above and nothing beyond it. If a row is out of date, we would rather hear it than rank on it.

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Other comparisons

Same structure, same honesty rules, different competitor.

Try it before you decide.

Every plan starts with the same trial and the same full feature set. Import your catalog, take one real order, and judge it on that.

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