Walk-in & contactless customers

At the register you often want to hold a sale against a customer without asking for an email or verifying anything — a regular you know by name, or a shopper who just wants a receipt. A walk-in customer is exactly that: a lightweight point-of-sale profile that can hold a sale with as little as a name, or with no contact information at all.

Note

Walk-ins are the point-of-sale side of the customer-identity rules (CU-12). Everything here is about POS; online checkout always collects the contact the store’s checkout is configured to require.

Adding a walk-in

In the POS customer selector, choose Add walk-in customer. You can create the walk-in three ways:

• Name only — first and/or last name, no contact. Ideal for a regular you recognize.
• With a typed email or phone — enter a receipt email or phone. It is stored as ordinary contact data, unverified — nothing is sent and nothing is confirmed at the register.
• Fully contactless — create the sale-holder with nothing typed at all.

The sale attaches to whatever you create, and the customer appears in your customer list like any other.

Tip

The register’s own default is still a fully anonymous sale — you only add a walk-in when you want to attach one. Adding a walk-in is one optional tap.

A walk-in cannot sign in

A walk-in has no verified contact, so:

• It cannot sign in to a storefront account.
• It receives no account invitation and no marketing — a name-only or contactless walk-in is excluded from marketing by construction.
• A typed email or phone on a walk-in is data for your records and receipts, not a login credential. Because it is unverified, it does not yet claim ownership of that email or phone.

This is the same rule as everywhere else on Sellerlane: login requires a verified contact. See customer contacts.

Turning a walk-in into an account

A walk-in becomes a full, login-capable customer the moment one of its contacts is verified.

1. Add an email or phone to the walk-in (if it does not already have one typed).

2. Verify it — the customer enters the one-time code sent to that contact, or you trigger verification for them.

3. The verified contact now claims ownership and enables passwordless sign-in. The former walk-in is a normal customer account.

If a receipt email or phone is captured at the register on a later visit, it is added to the walk-in as an unverified contact and the sale attaches to the same profile — so a regular’s purchases accumulate on one record instead of scattering across anonymous sales.

How contacts and login work

The full identity model behind walk-ins: customer contacts.

Merging duplicates

A walk-in and an online profile for the same person? Merge them.