What happens after you contact us: from day 1 to your first payment

You clicked "Get in touch." You typed your name, your email, maybe a short note about your business. You hit send.

And now you're staring at your inbox thinking: what happens next? Do they call me? Do I need to prepare something? Is there a sales pitch? How long until I can actually take payments?

We get it. The space between "I want to accept payments" and "my first customer just paid" feels like a black box. So let's open it up. Here's exactly what happens, week by week, from the moment you contact us to the moment real money hits your account.

Week 1: The conversation

Within one business day, someone from our team will reach out. Not a chatbot. Not a form letter. A person who will ask you three questions:

What do you sell? Physical products, digital goods, services, subscriptions — it matters because different business types have different requirements.

What platform is your site on? OpenCart, WooCommerce, Tilda, Flexbe, Shopify, custom-built — this determines how we connect payments.

Do you have a PIB and a business bank account? These are the two things we can't do for you. If you don't have them yet, we'll tell you exactly how to get them (it takes about a week).

That's the whole first conversation. No pitch deck. No "premium tier" upsell. Just understanding what you need so we can tell you exactly what the process looks like.

If everything checks out, we send you a contract. It's short. It's in Serbian. It says what we do, what you pay, and how either of us can walk away if it's not working.

Week 2: The connection

This is where the technical magic happens — but you might not even notice it.

If you're on a supported platform (OpenCart, WooCommerce, Tilda, Flexbe): we send you a plugin or a set of credentials. You paste two values into your admin panel — Platform ID and API Key — and you're connected. Takes about 15 minutes. We've had merchants do it over coffee.

If you have a custom website: your developer adds one API call to your checkout flow. One POST request creates a payment session. We send the customer to our hosted payment page. When they pay, we send a webhook to your server. Your developer has probably done harder things before lunch.

Either way, our team is on a call with you or your developer if anything is unclear. We don't send documentation and disappear. We stay until it works.

While the connection is being set up, we also configure:

• Your fiscal receipt settings (eFiskalizacija — automatic, you don't touch it)
• Your payment page branding (your logo, your colors)
• Your webhook URL (where we notify you about payments)
• Your success and failure redirect pages

Week 3: The test

Everything is connected. Now we test.

You open your own store. You add a product to cart. You go to checkout. You see the Polako Finance payment page. You enter a test card number (we give you one). You complete the payment.

What should happen:

• ✓ You see the success page
• ✓ Your order status updates automatically
• ✓ You get an email confirmation
• ✓ A fiscal receipt is generated
• ✓ The test transaction appears in your dashboard

If anything doesn't work, we fix it. Together, on a call, usually within the same session. Most issues are a wrong URL or a missing checkbox — things that take two minutes to fix once you know where to look.

We test on desktop and mobile. We test with different card types. We test what happens when a payment fails. We make sure the sad path works too — because customers do cancel, cards do get declined, and your store needs to handle it gracefully.

Launch day: The switch

When you're happy with testing, we flip the switch. Test mode becomes live mode. The next payment on your site will be real.

We usually recommend launching quietly — don't announce it on social media yet. Let a few real orders come through organically. Watch the dashboard. Make sure the money appears in your bank account (it takes 1-7 business days for the first settlement).

Once you've seen two or three real payments flow through successfully, you're ready to tell the world. Post on Instagram. Send the newsletter. Run the ad. Your store is live.

After launch: We're still here

We don't disappear after setup. Your Polako Finance dashboard shows you:

• Every transaction, with status and details
• Revenue by day, week, month
• Refund history
• Settlement reports for your accountant

If something breaks — a payment fails unexpectedly, a customer reports an issue, you need to process a refund — you contact us the same way you did on day one. We respond within one business day. Usually faster.

The timeline, honestly

We say "20 days" because that's typical. But the real variable isn't us — it's you.

Fastest we've done it: 5 days. Merchant had PIB, bank account, and a WooCommerce site. Plugin installed in 15 minutes. Tested the next day. Live by Friday.

Slowest: 6 weeks. Merchant needed to register a company first, then open a bank account, then build a website. None of that is our step — but we guided them through all of it.

The technical integration — our part — takes 1-3 days. Everything else depends on how ready you are when you start.

What you need before you contact us

Nothing, technically. You can contact us with just an idea and we'll help you figure out the steps. But if you want to move fast, here's what speeds things up:

• A registered company in Serbia (or in process)
• PIB — your tax identification number
• A business bank account (tekući račun) — or at least an application in progress
• A website — even a basic one, as long as it has HTTPS

Don't have all of these? That's fine. Contact us anyway. We'll tell you what to do first and in what order. We've walked dozens of merchants through the process from zero.

In short

• Day 1: You contact us, we respond within one business day
• Week 1: We understand your business, send a contract
• Week 2: We connect payments to your site (15 minutes for plugins, 1-3 days for custom)
• Week 3: We test together until everything works perfectly
• Launch: Flip the switch, first real payment comes through
• After: Dashboard, support, and settlements — we're still here