A payment link is a URL that a merchant generates and shares with a customer — via email, SMS, messaging app, or any other channel — to collect a payment. When the customer clicks the link, they are taken to a hosted checkout page where they can enter their payment details and complete the transaction. The merchant does not need a website, an e-commerce storefront, or a complex payment integration to collect the payment. Payment links effectively turn any communication channel into a payment channel.
Payment links have become a critical tool for businesses that operate outside traditional e-commerce workflows. Service-based businesses use them to invoice clients after completing work. Sales teams send them to close deals during or after a phone conversation. Field service operators use them to collect payment on-site without card terminals. In B2B contexts, payment links replace the slow cycle of issuing invoices and waiting for bank transfers, enabling immediate card payment with a single click. Their simplicity makes them accessible to businesses of any size and technical sophistication.
Despite their apparent simplicity, payment links involve the same underlying complexity as any card payment — authorisation, fraud screening, PCI compliance, multi-currency support, and settlement. The hosted checkout page must be secure, mobile-responsive, and capable of presenting the right payment methods for the customer’s location and preferences. For platforms generating payment links on behalf of their merchants, the link must also be brandable, configurable, and tied back to the platform’s reconciliation and reporting systems.
Shuttle Global’s Payment Links product provides platforms with a fully hosted, white-label checkout that can be generated programmatically via API or manually through a dashboard. Each link is tied to Shuttle’s multi-PSP infrastructure, meaning the checkout page can present the optimal payment methods and route the transaction through the best-performing processor for that geography and card type. For platforms, this extends the same PSP-neutral coverage they get from Embedded Payments into scenarios where a full checkout integration is not practical — telephone sales follow-ups, email invoicing, or customer support interactions. Combined with Voice Checkout, Payment Links give platforms a way to convert any customer interaction into a completed payment without building or maintaining their own hosted checkout infrastructure.