checkout.liquid is gone: what Indian D2C stores do about it

For years, Indian D2C stores customised Shopify's checkout by editing checkout.liquid or running Shopify Scripts — that's where a lot of COD logic, custom fields and discount rules lived. Shopify has retired that path in favour of checkout extensibility. If your store still depends on the old way, the question isn't whether to move; it's which direction.

What actually changed

checkout.liquid gave you raw template access. Checkout extensibility replaces it with sanctioned building blocks: Checkout UI extensions for interface changes and Shopify Functions for logic like discounts and payment/shipping rules. It's more stable and upgrade-safe — but you work inside what the extension points allow, and some of the deepest customisations, plus certain extension surfaces, are gated to Shopify Plus.

Why this hits Indian stores harder

The customisations Indian merchants care about most are exactly the India-specific ones checkout.liquid was bent to do: OTP identity, COD risk rules, partial COD, pincode gates, UPI-first payment ordering, GST-invoice fields. Those aren't default Shopify concerns, so re-expressing them purely through native extensibility — especially off Plus — ranges from limited to impossible. We wrote up the full boundary in what you can and can't change about Shopify's checkout in India.

The two honest options

• Stay on native + extensions: safest if your checkout needs are light — mostly prepaid, low COD, no custom risk logic. You accept the extension-point ceiling in exchange for zero third-party surface.
• Replace the checkout: an app takes over cart and Buy-now with its own checkout, giving back the deep control checkout.liquid used to — OTP, per-band COD rules, UPI-first, custom fields — while orders still land in Shopify as normal orders.

If you replace it, replace it carefully

A replacement checkout re-earns everything native gave you for free — so vet it on the boring guarantees: orders land as real Shopify orders (fulfilment, apps, reports intact), it reprices server-side from Shopify, it honors Google Shopping discounts, and it's reversible with a kill switch. That's the checklist in how to evaluate a checkout app, and it's how IndiSell's checkout is built — installed by OAuth, no theme edits, native checkout one switch away if you turn it off.