# Stores

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A store belongs to a market and maps a physical sales point. Stores can have their own stock location, payment methods, and merchant. When a store is in scope, resources are filtered and orders are associated with that store.
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## What is a store?

A [store](/core-api-reference/stores.md) belongs to a specific market and maps the market's physical sales points — retail stores, pop-up stores, and similar — for managing in-store sales.

Stores can optionally have a different merchant (otherwise inherited from the associated market), a store-specific stock location, and one or more store-specific payment methods.

When a store is put in scope during an access token request, all fetched resources (SKUs, prices, etc.) are automatically filtered by the associated market, orders are linked to the store, and stock and payment options are updated accordingly.

## Stock management

If a store has its own stock location, it acts like a small warehouse added to the market's inventory. When calculating availability, the store's stock location is added to the market's stock hierarchy with the highest priority.&#x20;

If the store has no stock location, the market's stock hierarchy (as defined in the related inventory model) is used as a fallback.

This logic lets you check in-store stock first while also making the full market inventory accessible from physical locations — enabling scenarios like endless aisle.

## Payment methods

You can enable specific payment methods for a store. When a store is in scope, only those are returned as available payment methods. If none are configured, the market's payment methods are used as a fallback.

## Shipments

Shipments from store orders where all items are available in the store's stock location and no stock transfers are involved are automatically considered dispatched by the store operator. They require no shipping method and are marked as delivered as soon as the order is placed.

If some items are not available in-store but are in other market stock locations, behavior depends on the selected [inventory strategy](/how-tos/inventory/strategies.md). For example:

* **Ship from primary** — stock transfers are created from other stock locations to the store's (automatically set as primary). The customer can pick up the missing items once the transfers are complete.
* **Split shipments** — the missing items are shipped to the customer's shipping address.


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