If you want to sell your products online on your WooCommerce site, you have a crucial decision – which WooCommerce payment gateways are ideal for your website? Take a deep breath cause there are so many options, and you must thoroughly choose.
Choosing the right payment gateway is vital for your eCommerce business, and finding the right one that integrates well with WooCommerce and meets your requirements can be daunting.
This article will teach how payment gateways work, what features to look for, and the best WooCommerce payment gateways.
What Is Payment Gateway
Payment gateways can be defined as a service to process all online payments. This service enables your customers to make payments through credit/debit cards, which you can receive in your store and then transmit to a bank.
The payment gateway automatically approves or cancels the purchase based on the payment process. If it approves, the payment is deducted from your customer’s account and transferred to your store account.
Payments Gateways – The Process
Though it looks simple superficially, a lot is going on beneath the surface. When your customer makes a payment, it is transmitted through the store server, and from there, it is transferred to the issuing bank for approval.
The payment request is either accepted or rejected following issuing bank’s response. The gateway then returns the response to the merchant server. Depending upon the response, the customer is approved or disapproved of making that purchase.
Selecting a WooCommerce payment gateway for your store can make or break your business. Don’t worry; many great options are available that integrate flawlessly with WooCommerce, which eases the payment process for your customers and streamlines the payment process.
Selection Criteria WooCommerce Payments Gateways
Several factors are involved in selecting a payment gateway, and you cannot afford to overlook any of them. Let’s look at these parameters in detail.
Integration and Compatibilities
If you want to save yourself from hassles, opt for payment gateways compatible with WordPress and WooCommerce. Compatible plugins will automate connection and management between WooCommerce and third-party payments gateways, so you don’t have to worry about manually figuring out the connection steps, which can be hectic if you are not a tech wiz.
Types of Payments Gateways
There are two major types in terms of the way they process payments
- Type 1 allows you to process and display all payments on your website.
- Type 2 payment gateways restrict all payment processes from being completed on your site. Thus, customers are redirected to the payment gateway’s site for completion.
You can choose any from the above, but the first option looks more attractive to your customers because there is a chance you can lose your client because of the longer and more complex payment process.
Simplicity
It is vital to lower the burden of complexities in your business. You can be with one less problem if you choose a payment gateway that is simple to use for your customer and prevent analysis paralysis.
Plugins enjoy a reputation for being used for decades and claim to offer ease of payment. All of them offer some advantages over others, but what should be important to you is “keep it simple and quick.”
Cost
There is no free lunch; the same goes for payment gateways. They charge a monthly fee and an additional fee for certain transactions. It is imperative to choose one which suits the business you are running. Watch out for extra charges on recurring or subscription base payments.
Also, look into high international and offline processing charges. This is important if you want to sell your products outside your country. So, there is much to analyze before choosing the best WooCommerce payment gateway.
Transaction Fees
Sadly! Along with the cost, you also need to look into transaction fees that cause every gateway to charge a certain amount with every successful purchase. Every gateway has a different recipe for transaction fees, but your job is to choose the best option for your business.
There are two gears of transaction fees. One should thoroughly analyze these components of the payment gateways because either you or your customer will bear it.
1. % on Transaction
This hurts the most, all payment gateways vary in percentages, but mostly they fall between 2.5% to 3.5%
2. Fee for Every Transaction
For each transaction, they charge a fixed amount which runs around 0.3%
You must also check fees for specific transactions, which can be paid through an invoice or chip credit cards.
Acceptability of Multiple Payments Methods
It serves your store a long way if your payment gateway caters to multiple payment methods. Many only allow credit/debit cards, and some allow PayPal, bank transfers, and Bitcoin.
It is best to choose a payment gateway that offers multiple payment methods to offer convenience to your customers.
Multi-Currency Handling
It is not unlikely that your customers mostly belong to a foreign country, or maybe they like to pay in their currency. So, you also need to look for payment gateways supporting multiple currency conversions while remaining within your budget. Some gateways charge more for less common currencies. So, having a platform that handles multiple currencies is good for customers and can increase sales.
Dependable Security
Since your eCommerce store is part of cyberspace, it is vital that your payment gateway assures fail-proof security against any cyber threat and keeps it safe for you and your customers.
If you have a gateway with vulnerable security, you are putting your customer and store under threat of losing important data, which can lead to many unfriendly consequences.
But don’t worry because virtually all payment gateways offer dependable security if you use them properly. Having a secure platform helps build customer trust. If you have a secure gateway, it will help you build a better reputation for your site.
Now that we have established the selection criteria for the best WooCommerce payment gateway, we must look into a few top third-party payment platforms.
5 Best WooCommerce Payment Gateways
1. Stripe
There is no doubt; that this is one of the best WooCommerce payments gateways. The popularity of Stripe is due to its simple user interface and developer-friendly setup. Many major names in eCommerce businesses, like Amazon, Shopify, Kickstarter, etc, widely use it.
Stripe integrates flawlessly with WooCommerce, enabling you to accept payments directly to your website. This feature encourages your customer’s trust and helps in augmenting sales.
With Stripe, customer payments are always secure because it enables PCI optimization; you can process payments from major credit/debit cards in 135 currencies in 42 countries.
Stripe features can be summarized as follows:
- Support 12 payments methods
- Entertain payments through invoices
- Provide detailed financial reports
- Offers flexibility in customizing design
- Top-of-the-line customer support
- Overall costs fall inside industry standards
- Stripe charges 2.9% on every transaction with 0.3% on each transaction fee; there is an additional 1% charge on international transactions and currency conversion
- Stripe is free to set up, with no yearly/monthly charges.
Considering all these features, Stripe can be your payment gateway of choice, but let us evaluate a few more platforms.
2. Square
Square is suited more for an in-person store but equally serves an online store and can accept payments online. It is structured to enable ease of use, especially if you have physical products to sell in your store. Square offers multiple options for shipping, in-person pickups, and tracking.
There is excellent compatibility between Square and WooCommerce; you can freely take online/in-person payments. This hybrid feature helps you to entertain more customers on the go and increase your sales.
Square supports the WooCommerce subscription extension in processing recurring payments, which makes Square an excellent choice for small-scale businesses.
Square features are as follows:
- Hybrid support enables you to take payments in person and online.
- You can stay connected with Square in person, enabling you to make sales while doing whatever you want.
- Tracking support for pickup and delivery.
- Support multiple payment methods like cards, invoices, coupons, Google Pay, and Apple Pay.
- Square also offers paid monthly plans.
- Square can be integrated with Instagram.
- It is cost-effective compared to some other platforms. Charges 2.9% per transaction with a 0.3$ fee.
- Reach is the downside of Square; services are only available in the USA, UK, Australia, Japan, and Canada
- More suited for in-person stores.
3. PayPal Pro
It is the most popular and best WooCommerce payment gateway in the financial world. PayPal Pro gives you excellent reach; you get payments from more than 200 countries, enabling you to expand globally.
PayPal Pro offers fail-proof security through its anti-fraud feature. That helps in building the trust of your customers.
It also has a WooCommerce plugin that easily sets up your eCommerce store. It also allows you to display the payment process on your website, which prevents analysis paralysis and increases the chances of more sale conversions, resulting in fewer abandoned carts.
Pay Pal Pro’s key features are:
- It can generate invoices for customers.
- Rapid processing enables you to get payments in minutes.
- It has WooCommerce plugin support
- The API is customizable
- Provide fail-proof security
- It is very easy to setup
- It provides you with exceptional reach all over the world.
- It is a closed platform, so not developer friendly
- Unlike their major competitors, they charge a monthly fee of 30$ along with 2.9% with an additional 1.5% for international transactions.
- Supports multiple payment methods, including bank transfers, invoices, and credit/debit cards.
PayPal Pro is the platform of choice for every business, providing a quick setup, exceptional global reach, and fail-proof security.
4. Amazon Pay
Another contender for the best WooCommerce payment gateway is Amazon Pay. This platform belongs to a big name in the eCommerce industry and provides excellent compatibility with WooCommerce, by offering a free plugin. Amazon Pay allows customers to complete their transactions while staying on your site, assuring more successful sales.
Amazon Pay also permits customers to use their shopping accounts to shop from other stores. This can bring huge numbers of Amazon shoppers to your site. Amazon Pay does not charge any monthly subscription fee and supports multiple payment methods.
The following are key features of Amazon Pay
- Allows you to take payments while staying on your site.
- Optimized for mobile/tab use.
- They also offer support plans for nonprofit org.
- Support both small and large-scale businesses.
- Support Amazon account holders to shop from other stores.
- No monthly fee, but it charges 2.9% and a .30$ fee on every transaction.
- Amazon is far-reaching and provides services in more than 170 countries.
- It offers multiple payment methods, including recurring, deferred, and split payments.
The downside of Amazon Pay is that it can become a competitor of your products. Otherwise, it provides some peculiar features which can suit your business model and deserve to be your choice.
5. Alipay
China is the top global exporter, so you cannot overlook Alipay. Alibaba develops it and has over 70 million users worldwide, with major users coming from China, making it a choice platform if you want to sell your product to Chinese consumers.
A plugin is available for WooCommerce integration, which you can set up easily. Alipay allows payments in Yuan and Renminbi, both are Chinese currencies, and these payments can be made directly from the Alipay account.
The following are features of Alipay.
- Alipay offers mobile support
- You can directly receive payments from Alipay account holders
- It offers dependable security and privacy to your customers. Furthermore, the Escrow system gives surety of the legitimacy of payments.
- Offers WooCommerce integration plugin.
- Offer access to the Chinese market.
- Compatible with WooCommerce App.
- Global use but mostly by Chinese customers
- Support payment through credit/debit cards.
- They charge 0.55% per transaction
Alipay is the logical choice for businesses that want to address the Chinese market. Despite this limitation, it still serves the huge Chinese market, which can be a major advantage for your small-scale business.
Conclusion
And that’s it for our list of the best WooCommerce payment gateways. It is important to decide based on your business needs and requirements because what might work for some businesses won’t necessarily work for you. Thus, you first need to chalk out what you need in your payment gateway; then, you can choose any platform that agrees with your needs.
Leave a Comment