The Checkout Checklist
What to know before onboarding
Instagram for Business
The Checkout Checklist
What to know before onboarding
Here are 10 things to help you decide if checkout on Instagram is right for your business.
1. Make sure you’re an eligible U.S. business or creator account by reading our Commerce Eligibility Requirements
2. Have a commerce-ready catalog with items that are eligible for purchase on your own website, with details like inventory counts, size and color variants.
3. Keep inventory updated and keep your product catalog full.
4. Have an email address for inbound customer service inquiries, and ensure you check it regularly. Reply to inquiries within 2 business days.
5. You will be required to abide by the shipping policy of Commerce Manager or your platform partner, depending on your integration path. When you ship orders, you must add tracking information.
6. Issue refunds of new and unused products that are returned within 2 business days after you receive the returned item. Final sale and return windows up to 30 days are currently available at the category-level (not the product level) for categories such as apparel, books, beauty, and electronics. You can read more about our Commerce Manager returns policy here.
7. While setting up a Shop is free, know that
selling directly via checkout on Instagram has a selling fee. However, until June 30, 2023 we are waiving this selling fee to help businesses. Read more about our fee and what it covers in our Help Center.
8. To ensure the privacy of our users, we do not share customer data aside from name, email and shipping address to fulfill orders. Customer email addresses cannot be used for marketing purposes unless the customer opts-in. At this time, your customers can only opt-in to share email addresses for marketing purposes if your shop is integrated via our API or some platform partners.
9. Only products in USD can be purchased via checkout. You can continue to tag products in your catalog that are not priced in USD, but people will see a link to view the product on your external website. This also means you have to have a US tax ID (EIN) that matches your legal name and a State Tax Registration Number for every state where you have a presence. You need a US bank account for payouts and a representative’s name, SSN and DOB to verify the authenticity of your business.
10. After you enable checkout on Instagram, all shopping tags will direct people who are based in the U.S. to transact within Instagram. People based outside of the U.S. will continue to see a link to view the product on your external website.