Working discount codes are compiled into the browser bundle

Why it matters

Your published JavaScript contains one or more discount codes with their values. Anyone can read them straight out of the bundle — no guessing required — and the codes you meant for one campaign, one partner, or one customer are effectively public. Worse, a discount table shipped to the browser usually means the browser is the thing applying it: if the reduced price is then sent to your checkout, a code is not even needed to pay less. Expired and unlaunched codes are exposed too, so an upcoming promotion can be used before it starts.

How ShipReady detects it

Payment configuration that stops money arriving. The failure this pillar exists for is mundane and catastrophic: a live site wired to a payment provider's TEST environment. Checkout appears to work, the form submits, a success page renders — and no money ever moves. It survives launch because the developer's own testing passes perfectly, and it is usually found when a founder wonders why a week of signups produced no revenue. Deliberately narrow. Every rule here keys off a marker that is definitionally a test credential — Razorpay's `rzp_test_` prefix, Paddle's sandbox environment call, Adyen's test Checkout host. None of them require interpretation, none of them can appear in a correctly configured production deployment, and none of them involve touching the payment provider or attempting a transaction. One marker is shared rather than definitional: `pk_test_` is issued by BOTH Stripe and Paystack. It still proves test mode, so it is still reported — but the provider is resolved from what the page actually loads rather than assumed from the prefix (see _publishable_key_provider). NOT checked, deliberately: whether a checkout page exists or is reachable. Payment routes have no convention — /checkout, /pricing, /billing, /upgrade, /subscribe are all common and most sites have none of them. Probing a list of guesses and reporting the 404s would produce noise on nearly every scan, which is the opposite of what this pillar is for.

Detection is deterministic. ShipReady reports this only when it observes the condition directly, and prefers to miss a real problem over inventing one. Rule version 1.4.0.

How to fix it

This is the prompt ShipReady puts in your report — written to be pasted straight into Cursor, Claude Code, or whichever assistant built the app.

Your client bundle contains discount codes and their values, so anyone can read them from the page source — and if the browser is applying the discount locally, the code is not even needed to pay less. Move validation to the server: the browser should send only the code string the customer typed, and your backend (or your payment provider) decides whether it is valid and what it is worth. Stripe, Paddle and Polar all hold promotion codes on their side — create them there and pass the customer's input to the API when you create the checkout session, so the discount is applied where the price is decided. Then treat the exposed codes as public: expire or rotate any that were meant to be limited, single-use, partner-specific or not yet launched, and check your order history for redemptions of codes that were never publicly announced. Finally, make sure the server recomputes the final amount rather than trusting a total sent from the client.

Frequently asked questions

What does "Working discount codes are compiled into the browser bundle" mean?

Your published JavaScript contains one or more discount codes with their values.

How serious is it?

ShipReady rates this high. Fix before launch. A real weakness that an attacker can act on.

How do I fix it?

Paste the fix prompt on this page into Cursor, Claude Code or your AI editor. It is the same prompt ShipReady puts in your report.

Can I check my own site?

Yes — ShipReady scans up to ten pages of any public site for free and reports this alongside every other check. The free report lists every issue it finds and shows full evidence and a fix prompt for the critical and high-severity ones; medium and low findings are counted and unlock on Pro.

Related checks

• A payment form submits over an unencrypted http:// connectionhigh
• Card details are collected by your own page, not a hosted payment fieldhigh
• Payment test mode keyhigh
• A PayPal order is priced in the browsermedium
• Both live and test Stripe keys are shipped to the browsermedium
• Checkout price is submitted from a hidden form fieldmedium