The AddPaymentInfo event on Shopify
Updated
When it fires
When a shopper submits payment details at the payment step of checkout.
AddPaymentInfo is the narrowest audience above Purchase and the most valuable one you are probably not collecting. A shopper who entered card details and did not complete is a fundamentally different prospect from one who abandoned at the cart, and only this event separates them.
What each ad platform calls AddPaymentInfo
The same shopper action goes by a different name on every network, and sending the wrong one means the event is silently discarded rather than rejected with an error.
Parameters AddPaymentInfo should carry
value / currency- Order value at the payment step.
contents- Line items being paid for.
Why AddPaymentInfo goes missing on Shopify
- Unreachable from theme code for the same reason as InitiateCheckout — it happens inside Shopify’s checkout.
- Not assigned by default in most pixel setups, so it is absent rather than broken.
The abandonment diagnostic almost nobody collects
Cart abandonment is usually treated as one number, but it hides two completely different problems. A shopper who abandoned at the cart was still deciding. A shopper who entered card details and then left hit something — a shipping cost, a failed payment, a moment of doubt at the final screen.
AddPaymentInfo is the only standard event that separates the two, which makes it worth assigning even on stores that will never optimise against it. Once it exists, the drop-off between AddPaymentInfo and Purchase becomes measurable, and that specific gap usually points at something concrete and fixable rather than at generic funnel leakage.
Where it sits in a Shopify checkout
Shopify’s checkout collects contact details, then shipping, then payment. AddPaymentInfo marks the transition out of that last step, which makes it the narrowest funnel stage above the order itself and the one with the least ambiguity about intent.
It is also unreachable from theme code, for the same reason InitiateCheckout is: the step happens inside Shopify’s hosted checkout, where your theme does not run. Any setup that captures AddPaymentInfo is by definition going through the Web Pixels API or a first-party integration, which is worth knowing if you are auditing someone else’s configuration and want a quick tell.
Why it is a poor optimisation target
Meta wants roughly fifty conversion events per ad set per week to stabilise delivery. AddPaymentInfo sits between InitiateCheckout and Purchase in volume, which on most Shopify stores means it is only marginally more frequent than Purchase itself — not enough headroom to be worth optimising against instead.
Its value is diagnostic and audience-shaped. As a retargeting pool it is the highest-intent group you can address short of past customers, and it is small enough that a bid premium on it barely moves total spend.
How to verify AddPaymentInfo is firing
Place a test order with a discount code and watch for AddPaymentInfo between InitiateCheckout and Purchase in Test Events.
AddPaymentInfo questions
- Is AddPaymentInfo worth optimising against?
- Rarely as a campaign objective — volume is too low. It earns its place as a retargeting audience and as a diagnostic for where checkout abandonment actually happens.
- Why do Snapchat and Pinterest have no equivalent?
- Neither defines a standard payment-step event. Send it as a custom event if you need it there.
Go deeper
The Facebook Conversions API on Shopify →How the Meta Conversions API recovers Shopify conversions lost to iOS 14, ad blockers and Safari, what event deduplication does, and how to set it up.