Every WooCommerce store needs a way for customers to pay. You won’t want any second-rate solution either. Any WooCommerce payments functionality you add needs to be robust, secure, and easy to user for both you and your customers. The WooPayments plugin is a popular choice for a variety of reasons.
This is WooCommerce’s own payment solution, which provides a seamless way to manage your transaction within the WooCommerce ecosystem. It’s a natural way to integrate payments into your site, but also has its own unique approach that looks to rival the competition.
Across this article, I’ll expand on what WooPayments can offer your store. I’ll go through the concept of WooCommerce payments, look at the WooPayments plugin itself, and pass along some tips and tricks for using it in an optimal way.
Understanding WooCommerce Payments and the WooPayments Plugin
As the number one e-commerce platform for WordPress, WooCommerce is the way to transform any site into a store. The core functionality is free, and much like its parent platform, it’s ready to use out of the box. However, it doesn’t cover every base you need to the level you’ll require it. Payments are something you’ll often need an extension for.
The former WooCommerce Payments plugin β now WooPayments β plugs a gap in that it builds on top of the default ways to carry out transactions. WooPayments provides the gateway between your store and the user to deliver a safe, secure, and streamlined checkout process.
The options you have to manage those payments are all in line with modern e-commerce. For instance, while you can accept typical credit and debit cards, you also have the option to implement ‘buy-now-pay-later’ apps such as Klarna and Afterpay. With an optional card reader, you can also offer ‘tap-to-pay’ processing too.
Before I move onto the general benefits of WooPayments, I’d like to highlight the pricing. This is one of the biggest positives from using the plugin, so let’s look at the cost for you.
WooPayments Pricing
The core functionality of the plugin is free, and you can download it from the WordPress Plugin Directory. This means you can checkout options to your site without spending a penny. However, you will need to pay a small fee per transaction.
This Pay As You Go (PAYG) approach does have detractors, but for a store that is new to the scene, the lure of a free initial setup could be worth the investment. From my research, I couldn’t see a way to opt out of these fees through a subscription or alternative payment option β which is disappointing.
The Pros and Cons of Using WooCommerce Payments (and WooPayments)
Of course, given that most stores will need a payment processor on-site, WooPayments will always be on that list. There are two big reasons why this is so:
- WooPayments is the only ‘official’ processor for WooCommerce. As such, you’ll (in theory) have the greatest and tightest integration possible. What’s more, you’ll know that the extension will work with your current WordPress setup, regardless of updates.
- The free barrier for entry is a strong lure for many businesses. The fees per country are small enough that you could absorb the cost given enough sales.
This is a good start, but there’s more. I always appreciate a plugin that uses the typical WordPress interface for management, and WooPayments does this too. It helps usability and efficiency, especially as you can track and manage every aspect relating to your sales and payment activity.
I’d also envisage those outside of the US and UK to appreciate the extensive support for different global currencies. There are over 135 currency options available, and this reach β along with the myriad payment options β shows WooPayments is flexible and adaptable.
You can also link WooPayments with other extensions such as WooCommerce Subscriptions to offer those types of products and services. In fact, there are a lot of ways the plugin helps you improve your conversion metrics and brand loyalty. For example, you can set up customer reward schemes, automatic bank deposits for payments, and more.
Finally, WooPayments has a big commitment to security. It comes with built-in anti-fraud measures and fraud protection rules that you can customize to your needs. This is a peace of mind addition that should please customers enough to click that Buy Now button.
The Drawbacks of Using WooPayments
No plugin offers a perfect set of features and functionality, and WooPayment does come with some negatives. First, the biggest: WooPayments requires you to connect to WordPress.com. This means it’s a struggle (but not impossible) to use the plugin on local testing environments. Further to this, if any issues arise, it could be down to your server, WooPayments, or WordPress.com.
Also, the customization options don’t always cover the bases you need them to. I won’t focus on this aspect today, but in short, you’ll need some coding knowledge to customize many elements the user sees.
For some store owners, those PAYG fees and a lack of alternatives won’t be welcome either. Depending on the currency you choose, the fees will differ. Not only that, but you may have to pay more based on your multi-currency options and the primary bank account currency. This will be around one percent of the total transaction, which could add up given lots of sales.
Comparing WooPayments with Other Gateways for WooCommerce Payments
WooPayments is not the only solution on the market for processing payments. Many will turn to Stripe, Square, PayPal, and more β although WooPayments uses Stripe at its core. As such, take a look at the following table, which compares WooPayments to the other leaders in the field:
Feature | WooPayments | Stripe | Square | PayPal |
Integration | Native integration with WooCommerce and WordPress | Uses an API integration with various platforms | Integrates with Square POS, online stores, and other systems | Most e-commerce platforms and websites accept this |
Payment Methods | Accepts major credit and debit cards, digital wallets, and buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) apps | Accepts major credit and debit cards, BNPL apps, and digital wallets | Accepts BNPL, major credit and debit cards, and digital wallets | Accepts major credit and debit cards, PayPal balance |
Transaction Fees (for US) | 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction | 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction | 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction | 3.49% + $0.49 per successful transaction. |
Security | Secure payment handling, anti-fraud measures | PCI-certified, aligns with NIST cybersecurity framework, multi-factor authentication | PCI compliance, dispute assistance, fraud protection, account security | Secure payment processing, fraud alerts, multi-factor authentication |
Global Availability | Available in over 135 countries | Available in 46 countries | Only available in eight countries | Available in over 200 countries |
Additional Features | Simplified payment management within the WooCommerce dashboard | Extensive developer tools and customizable features | POS system integration, inventory management | Buyer and seller protection, recurring payments, credit services |
Ease of Use | Seamless integration with WooCommerce ecosystem | Requires some technical expertise for setup and customization | Easy setup with a user-friendly interface | Easy setup and integration with various platforms |
It’s interesting that WooPayments has a wider scope than Stripe, given the underlying functionality. I personally like Stripe, so given the integration, it’s easy for me to recommend WooPayments specifically for WooCommerce.
How to Use WooPayments to Integrate WooCommerce Payments with Your WordPress Website
My experience is that using WooPayments is a cinch. As with any other WordPress plugin, you’ll need to install and activate it first in the typical way. From there, you have another setup round to complete. Let’s get into the process from there.
1. Connect the Plugin With WordPress and Enter Your Business’ Details
WooCommerce loves its setup and onboarding wizards. WooPayments uses one too, and you get to it from the Payments screen within WordPress.
To run through it, click the Connect your store button, then enter you email address and hit Continue.
Note that you also may need to log into WordPress.com here too in order to approve the connection, if you don’t use the Jetpack plugin on your site:
At this point, you’ll need to begin filling in fields. The first set relate to your legal entity and the products. you sell:
Next, choose your estimated annual income and the timeline for taking your store live:
Once you click Continue here, WooPayments will redirect you to the Stripe website to continue the setup.
2. Sign Up to Stripe
WooCommerce partners with Stripe for WooPayments. As such, WooPayments will redirect you to the Stripe website to finalize the setup. You’ll need to divulge details such as your tax and social security numbers if you live in the US, or equivalent for if you’re outside of this jurisdiction. You’ll find a few potential forms to fill out and complete here:
You first need to fill out your personal details across two screens:
Then, it’s time to link a business bank card to your Stripe account. There’s a list of popular banks here, although there’s a manual option too if yours doesn’t appear:
The information you need here will be the typical routing number (or equivalent for your country) that you provide for other services. It should take no more than a couple of minutes, and once you finish, Stripe will redirect you to WordPress.
3. Make a Test Payment and Complete the Setup
Within WordPress, you should see a confirmation message on the dashboard:
You can finally get down to using WooPayments. The main settings live on the WooCommerce > Settings > Payments screen:
At first, I’d recommend you enable the test mode, as this lets you work with WooPayments without any transactions taking place. There are a few other important options to tweak here too:
- Feel free to set up any further payment options you wish from the available selections.
- The Transaction settings let you adjust the wording that shows on bank statements, and set authorization for any pending payments. This lets you capture a charge up to seven days in the future.
- While every store will use Basic fraud protection as standard, you can also carry out some advanced customizations for extra security.
The official start guide for WooPayments includes lots more ways to use the plugin. However, at this point, the setup is complete and you can begin to take WooCommerce payments without any further work.
Your Next Steps Once You Implement WooPayments On Your WooCommerce Store
Once you can take payments, what then? There’s plenty more you can do to improve and optimize the User Experience (UX). My advice is to reassess your WooCommerce sales funnel before you take your new payment processing live.
In a nutshell, don’t make the new method worse than the old one! At the least, WooPayments should give you an equal experience to before. The ideal is to offer a better one. The steps you take here will ensure that’s the case.
For instance, you may WooPayments doesn’t offer much functionality to charge taxes on purchases. The WooCommerce team does provide an extensive guide on managing and reporting taxes on your sales, but this isn’t ideal for busy stores. Our guide on taxes and compliance for WooCommerce should give you the tools to improve this part of your checkout.
Product variations will likely be a part of your store, and charging different prices per variant is a common sales technique. The WooCommerce Attribute Swatches plugin could be a way to make this more straightforward:
You may also choose to put together a better receipt and invoicing system for your store. Of course, this depends on the products and services you offer. There are various plugins to help you create printable invoices and delivery notes, packing slips, PDFs, and more. In fact, Jetpack CRM could fill this gap for you if you already use the plugin.
As the name gives away, there are myriad features on offer, so it’s not only a way to create invoices. However, that functionality is top-notch, so if your store requires you to manage customer relationships too, it’s a front-running solution.
WooCommerce Payments Made Simple Using the WooPayments Plugin
Unless you’re a rare e-commerce website that takes cash on delivery or check, you’ll need WooCommerce payments active and available on your site. There are many options to choose from, but only WooPayments can boast an official seal of approval.
There are some setup sticking points, such as the need for WordPress.com activation and the inflexible pricing. However, the positives outweigh the negatives. It uses Stripe to process transactions, comes with near-perfect integration, and gives you the options you need to enable payments for your store.
Do you think WooPayments is the only option when it comes to implementing WooCommerce payments for your store? I’d love to talk about it with you in the comments section below!
One Response
Thanks for the detailed steps on WooCommerce Payments! The WooPayments plugin simplifies payment integration and boosts efficiency.