Accept Online Payments with Best WooCommerce Payment Gateways

With the whopping 2.14 billion digital buyers making orders online, it’s vital to make it convenient for customers to pay for the selected offers with their preferred payment methods. With over 3 billion eCommerce websites available on the modern-day web powered by WooCommerceWooCommerceA free, open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress.
More About WooCommerce, website owners should consider integrating their online projects with the most trusted and time-tested payment methods. What are the best WooCommerce payment gateways and how can you find the best solution for your store? Let’s see.

How WooCommerce Payment Gateways Work

A payment gateway is an applicationApplicationA software program designed to perform specific functions or tasks on electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablets, computers, and smart TVs.
More About Application that lets you security request online payments from customers. Once a client clicks on the “Order” button at checkout, WooCommerce payment gateways handle all the next steps, including:

• Verification of customers’ billing information; 
• Authenticating funds for each customer’s payment method;
• Approving payment requests and letting your store issue confirmation numbers;
• Getting you paid. 

How to Choose the Best WooCommerce Payment Gateway

There are many payments methods that you can integrate into your web store. However, how can you know that the chosen WooCommerce payment gateway is reliable and safe enough? The question is especially relevant to those businesses taking their first steps in eCommerce and needing help with selecting the best payment gateway. 

Different payment gateways have different policies, features, and pricing rates. The right selection of the payment method can multiple your business revenue and help you gain customers’ loyalty for the long term. Choosing the best WooCommerce payment gateway shouldn’t be a headache if you keep in mind the following aspects that influence your decision-making. 

Availability in Your Target Region

First and foremost, the selected WooCommerce payment gateway should be available in your country and the countries where your customers come from. For example, if you target the European market, you should consider using the payment method that is widely accepted in that region. 

To find it out, check the Supported Countries section of each payment gateway’s website. 

Recurring Payments

If your company sells subscription-based products like memberships and plans, you will need to find a WooCommerce payment gateway that supports recurring payments. Some payment methods do not have the recurring payments feature, which means that your customers should manually complete each transaction and it’s not about convenience. 

Security

When it comes to accepting payments from customers, you should ensure that your store safely processes every transaction. While choosing WooCommerce payment gateways, you may opt for these two options:

• Redirect, which forwards a customer to a different website to process payment, and then taken back to your site to finish the checkout;
• Direct, which lets your customer complete an order and pay for it without leaving your site. It requires an SSLSSLSecure Sockets Layer is a cryptographic protocol that ensures secure communication between a client and a server.
  More About SSL certificate as part of the PCI compliance.

If you choose a direct WooCommerce payment method, you should protect your customers’ sensitive data, including their names, email addresses, phone numbers, billing information, etc. The best way to do it is by using an SSL certificate. It encrypts communication between your site and your customers, and your site and the chosen payment method. 

GDPR

Making your WooCommerce site GDPR compliant is especially important if you are selling to customers in Europe. Depending on the selected payment method, different pieces of information may be collected at checkout. For example, Stripe and PayPal require the customers’ information to be processed to the payment processor from your site. 

While looking for the best WooCommerce payment gateway for your site, carefully check out what sort of information will be sent to the payment processor’s site and what exactly the payment processor will do with your customers’ details. Also, be honest with your customers and describe the procedure in your Privacy Policy.

All WooCommerce payment gateways should provide information about how they handle customer data. Before making the decision, carefully check their privacy policy and GDPR.  

Transaction Fees

While using WooCommerce payment gateways, be ready to be charged a fee for each transaction that takes place on your site. Different payment gateways have different fees that are based on your business location, the credit card type used by your customers, etc. You can compensate transaction charges by increasing your product prices, thus making your customers pay the fee instead of you. However, it puts you at risk of losing clients who night leave for competitors’ websites. Before taking this step, it’s vital to compare transaction fees offered by different providers and choose the one that would represent a perfect balance of transaction fees and the features the payment gateway provides. 

Other Charges

Besides transaction fees, some WooCommerce payment gateways may include additional charges, like setting up fees, bank withdrawal payments, account maintenance costs, etc. Such charges may not be very expensive, but the need to pay extra may be a feasible argument for startups. 

These are some of the most important factors that you should consider when choosing the best WooCommerce payment gateway for your store. While adjusting such a sensitive process as payment processing on your site, ensure that your customers are provided with everything needed to pay for the order hassle-free. To achieve maximum customer satisfaction, give your customers what they need. Take care of featuring such options as easy refunds, advanced security, verification, reliable support, etc. 

Most Popular WooCommerce Payment Gateways

There are tins of WooCommerce payment gateways for WordPressWordPressOpen-source content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage websites and blogs.
More About WordPress, both free and premium. Each of them comes loaded with its own collection of tools and features focused on making it easier for your customers to pay for their orders. In the collection below, you can find five of the most popular WooCommerce payment gateways used by thousands of businesses worldwide in the collection below. 

Stripe

Stripe is the most popular payment gateway for accepting credit card payments on eCommerce sites. WooCommerce is pre-built with Stripe support. It lets your customers pay with any credit and debit card, as well as use Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Alipay to pay for their orders. 

The WooCommerce payment gateway works in 40+ countries and processes payments in 135+ currencies. It’s also one of the most affordable WooCommerce payment gateways that work on phones and desktop devices. The transaction fee is 2.9% + 30¢. There are no annual or set up fees. Recurring payments are supported as well. You may feel free to use it for selling your subscription-based products and services. The payment gateway also seamlessly integrates with WordPress membership plugins. 

Square

The WooCommerce payment gateway works in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. It’s the perfect choice for businesses with physical locations that provide delivery and other services. The WooCommerce Square extension syncs products between your site and your Square account. Once you add any products to your Square account, they will be automatically added to your WooCommerce store. 

The transaction fee is different for different countries. Custom rates are available for some businesses with annual revenues over $250K and an average ticket size over $15. When using together with the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension, the payment gateway supports recurring payments. 

PayPal Standard

It’s one of the first solutions that come to your mind when we start talking about online payments processing. It’s one of the pioneers in the industry and one of the safest WooCommerce payment processing methods accepting PayPal Digital Payments, credit/debit cards, and local payment methods. To process payments through PayPal, you need to register a PayPal business account. 

We can say with 100% confidence that PayPal is a global payment method that is available in most countries, though there are certain restrictions in some locations.  While adding PayPal to your site, ensure that it’s supported in the countries where your target audience lives. 

PayPal doesn’t support on-site checkout. Your customers will be redirected to the PayPal website to complete their payments. Speaking about the fees, they are based on your account type and your sales volume. 

WooCommerce PayPal Pro

If you are looking for an opportunity for your customers to complete purchases without leaving your site, PayPal Pro is the right choice for you. The service is supported in the USA, UK, and Canada. 

Depending on the country where the payment gateway is used, businesses are due to pay different transaction fees and monthly payments. PayPal Pro doesn’t support recurring payments, so it’s not suitable for membership sites. 

Authorize.Net

The payment gateway is used by thousands of businesses in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The extension provides your customers with a seamless checkout process using their credit cards. Customers don’t leave your website while the transaction is securely processed in the background on Authorize.Net servers.

The extension also supports recurring payments for WooCommerce Subscriptions. It is user-friendly and allows users to save their payment method and reuse it.

WooCommerce Payments

WooCommerce Payments is currently available for US-based merchants and processes orders in US Dollars. Because of the pay-as-you-go transaction fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, WooCommerce Payments is a slightly more expensive payment gateway than other solutions on this list. 

It is a white-label version of Stripe and requires you to have a wordpress.com account and the JetPack pluginPluginA piece of software that can be easily installed and activated on a CMS platform to enhance its capabilities.
More About Plugin installed on your site. 

Bottom Line 

There are many WooCommerce payment gateways at your disposal. There are both free and premium solutions available. The choice of the best payment gateway for your eCommerce site depends on such factors as the country where your business is located and where your target audience lives. It’s also important to opt for those options that offer the best transaction fees and match the size of the business you are running. 

If we are talking about the payment gateways that we described in this post, PayPal Standard and Authorize.Net are somewhat similar in their features and are intended to provide your customers with a seamless online payment experience. Stripe is one of the most popular payment gateways for WooCommerce sites, which also allows merchants to set up Apple Pay and Google Pay payment methods. 

In the perfect scenario, WooCommerce websites should provide their customers with several payment methods, thus letting them choose the most appropriate one. Often, when a user cannot find the needed payment method on a web store, he or she is very likely to abandon the shopping cart and leave for a competitor’s website. 

To avoid this from happening, learn your audience, their preferences, and countries where they come from. Provide them with the services that meet or exceed their expectations, and get positive feedback from them with the increased sales.