How Optimum7 Enabled Secure Split Payments for High-Value Orders on BigCommerce
The Business
Customers are not adding a single accessory and checking out. They are building full overlanding setups: racks, storage systems, vehicle-specific gear, and bundled components that stack quickly. As average order values increased, a subtle constraint in the purchasing process became increasingly apparent, often occurring at the most inconvenient time.
BigCommerce’s native checkout is built around a single-card transaction model. That works until a card crosses into higher-ticket territory and real-world buying behavior kicks in: available credit spread across multiple cards, per-transaction limits, fraud controls on large authorizations, or customers using separate cards for business and personal spending.
When checkout cannot accommodate that reality, customers stall at payment. Even when they have already decided to buy, they abandon the order, delay the purchase, or complete it elsewhere.
Overland Vehicle Systems needed to eliminate this friction while safeguarding the most important aspects: trust at checkout, transaction security, and a stable platform capable of scaling as order values increased.
The Objective
The objective was clear: enable customers to split a single order across two credit cards inside BigCommerce checkout without disrupting the buying experience or introducing payment risk.
This was not a UI enhancement or a convenience feature. It was a checkout-layer improvement, where the margin for error is effectively zero.
From the outset, success was defined by strict requirements:
Enable split payments across two credit cards for qualifying high-value orders
Preserve a simple, intuitive checkout experience, no confusion, no added cognitive load
Maintain secure handling of payment data, with PCI-safe collection and validation
Integrate cleanly with existing payment processing, without breaking order workflows
Protect transaction integrity, especially in partial-failure scenarios
Provide reliable logging and traceability for support and reconciliation
Split payment functionality was intentionally gated to activate only above a defined order value, ensuring standard transactions remained untouched while high-value purchases gained the flexibility they required.
This was a structural checkout upgrade designed to unlock revenue at the top end of the funnel while keeping the platform secure, predictable, and operationally clean.
Key Business Challenges
Split payments introduce complexity in the one place customers expect simplicity: checkout.
1. High-Value Checkout Friction
As order values increased, the one-card requirement became a conversion barrier. Customers were being blocked by card constraints, not a lack of intent.
2. Platform Constraints
BigCommerce does not offer split tender payments natively. Any solution had to work within the checkout architecture without compromising performance, upgrade compatibility, or platform stability.
3. Transaction Integrity
Two-card checkout introduces partial-failure risk, where one authorization succeeds and the second fails. The system must resolve this cleanly, without partial charges or inconsistent order states.
4. Security and Compliance
Collecting two card inputs increases exposure if the architecture is wrong. Payment details had to be tokenized properly, handled securely, and never stored or surfaced in ways that create compliance risk.
The Strategic Challenge
The challenge was not adding a second card field.
It was building a split payment experience that customers would trust immediately while keeping full control of what happens behind the scenes. The solution needed to:
Appear only when it meaningfully improves checkout outcomes
Preserve clarity and confidence at the moment of payment
Handle failure states gracefully, without surprises
Avoid introducing long-term maintenance debt into checkout logic
Optimum7’s role was to deliver the payment flexibility customers needed, without increasing operational risk at the most sensitive moment in the funnel.
The Strategy
Optimum7 implemented a split payment functionality designed to live naturally inside BigCommerce checkout while adding transaction controls that the platform does not provide out of the box.
Every decision prioritized transaction integrity first, followed by customer clarity and long-term maintainability.
1. Custom Checkout Experience
Using the BigCommerce Checkout SDK, Optimum7 introduced a split payment option that activates only for qualifying high-value orders. This ensured the feature improved outcomes where needed without adding complexity to standard transactions.
The interface was designed to be clear, responsive, and low-friction, so customers understand immediately what they are doing and why.
2. Secure Two-Card Payment Handling
Collecting two credit cards during checkout significantly increases the security and compliance risks. To ensure sensitive data was handled properly, the solution was integrated to support secure data collection and tokenization without exposing raw card details.
Real-time validation prevented avoidable failures, while backend validation ensured incomplete or invalid attempts were caught cleanly without creating inconsistent payment states.
3. Transaction Integrity and Rollback Protection
Split payment functionality introduces the failure scenario that matters most: partial success.
If one payment is authorized and the second fails, the system cannot behave like a normal checkout. Without safeguards, you risk partial captures, double charges, and reconciliation issues that damage customer trust.
Optimum7 implemented control logic to manage authorization and capture sequencing, validate both payment outcomes, and automatically trigger rollback mechanisms when needed. The order is finalized only when both payments succeed, preventing orphaned transactions and eliminating the most costly edge cases before they reach customers or support teams.
4. Order Synchronization and Operational Traceability
Once both payments succeed, order creation and status synchronization must be flawless.
Custom logic ensured orders were created cleanly in BigCommerce with accurate status handling, without disrupting existing workflows. Logging was implemented across the transaction lifecycle to provide traceability for support, auditing, and reconciliation, which is especially important in multi-authorization checkout scenarios.
This visibility reduces time-to-resolution when something goes wrong and gives internal teams confidence that payment events can be explained, tracked, and verified.
Results
The split payment functionality launched cleanly, preserving checkout performance and order processing while adding secure two-card flexibility for qualifying orders. The result was a more resilient payment experience for high-intent buyers, without introducing platform risk.
1. Key Outcomes
Two-card payments are enabled for qualifying high-value orders, removing a common purchase blocker
Reduced checkout friction for large carts, keeping customers in-flow through payment
Secure, compliant handling of card data through tokenized collection and validation
Protection against partial-payment failures through rollback logic that prevents inconsistent order states and orphaned charges
A scalable implementation aligned with BigCommerce best practices, designed to remain stable as order values continue to rise
2. Business Impact
Overland Vehicle Systems removed a meaningful checkout barrier for high-intent buyers, specifically the customers most likely to purchase higher-value bundles and complete setup orders.
Customers can now complete large purchases without workarounds, without manually splitting orders, and without requiring support to intervene. That protects conversion at the most valuable stage of the funnel.
Internally, the business benefits from
Cleaner transaction control and fewer payment edge cases
Faster troubleshooting through structured logging and traceability
A checkout flow that scales with higher AOV, without adding operational overhead
Most importantly, this added flexibility did not come at the expense of trust. Checkout remains stable, secure, and consistent, even when transactions become more complex behind the scenes.
3. Strategic Outcome
This was not just a checkout tweak. It was a controlled upgrade to the most sensitive point in the buyer journey, built to unlock revenue while protecting trust, compliance, and operational integrity.
By merging checkout development that works well with the platform and careful transaction protections, Optimum7 created split payment features that are flexible, dependable, and able to grow over time
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