Best payment gateways for WooCommerce –

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When we have one and WooCommerce to sell products online, we must offer the user all the facilities and the best options so that they pay the amount of their purchase.

Through the WooCommerce payment gatewaysthe user can have different payment methods, to choose the one that is most convenient or that best suits their preferences or tastes.

We must not forget that online economic transactions can produce a certain insecurity in many users, so it is vitally important to create a climate of trust that, with various payment methods, guarantees the online payment security and privacy that users demand.

By using WooCommerce, we have access to a wide variety of online payment gateways. But we must not choose them blindly or “put the more, the better”, but, according to the profile of our users and customers, choose those with which we will get the get the most out of our online store.

In this article, we will first see what payment gateways are, how they work, and what factors we should evaluate to incorporate one or the other into our e-commerce website. Finally, we will review several WooCommerce payment gateways that integrate with WordPress.

What are online payment gateways?

We have several ways to pay for a purchase made online. The most common method is to use credit or debit cards; however, there are other options, such as bank transfers or cryptocurrencies.

Regardless of the payment method used, most online stores they do not process this money themselvesbut they do it with a bank or financial entity through an intermediary: online payment gateways.

Thus, an online payment gateway provides an external service to manage, validate, process and complete online payments from customers of an e-commerce website.

Once the purchase is complete, customers enter the information from your bank account, credit or debit card. Through the payment gateway, the online store will manage them in real time with the financial or banking entity, so that authorize that payment.

During the payment process, the payment gateway check available balance in the customer’s account and indicates whether or not the charge has been approved by the bank. If so, the total purchase amount is deducted from the customer’s account and transferred to the store owner’s account.

Therefore, the function of the payment gateway is accept or reject an economic transaction and, by extension, making the purchase online, between two accounts, the buyer’s and the store’s, before the amount is actually deposited into the store’s bank account.

How to choose an Online Payment Gateway for WooCommerce?

Thanks to the payment gateway, the payment process will be much easier, while also increases the security of the economic transactionboth for the seller and for the customers.

Now, when choosing one or another payment gateway, as well as the different payment methods available to users, the most relevant factor to take into account is the buying and payment habits of our customers potentials.

For example, if our users are mainly older people, they tend to represent a sector of the population that is reluctant to make online payments and prefer cash on delivery or bank transfers. In this case, not offering these payment methods could mean the failure of our online store.

Let’s see below what other factors and criteria influence during choosing an online payment gateway for WooCommerceboth from the point of view of the buyer and the seller:

• • Commissions of the operation. Online payment gateways can charge a commission based on the purchase amount, which can be fixed, a percentage of the total, by installments or even by total volume of purchases. We must make sure that this commission is within our profit margin.

• • Profile of the target audience. Some payment gateways only have certain online payment methods or only work in certain geographical areas. We must choose the one that best suits the circumstances of our potential customers, both in terms of available payment methods and international payment support.

• • Availability of money. In some payment gateways, once the online payment is made, the amount does not arrive directly to the seller’s bank account, but remains registered in his payment gateway account. To dispose of your money, the seller must expressly transfer it to your bank account, which can make accounting or financial management difficult.

• • Support of . For example, for monthly subscriptions to an online service, in which a fee payment is automatically charged to the customer’s account each month. In addition to the existence of this support, it is necessary to check if it implies any additional cost for the seller.

• Ease of integration with WooCommerce. And the less intervention required by the seller, the better, since you will not have to be aware of technical aspects or updates to the payment gateway. In general, this point is solved perfectly by all the most widespread payment gateways, given the large number of existing online stores based on WordPress and WooCommerce.

Although it is possible to use more than one payment gateway, it is not usually the most advisable option. In the case of the seller, it makes it difficult to manage sales, which are spread over several gateways. While for the buyer it can be confusing which one to choose to proceed with the payment of their purchase.

Online (and offline) payment methods

There is often confusion between the concept of “payment methods” and “payment gateways”, sometimes even being used interchangeably. However, they are two completely different concepts.

Thus, while payment gateways are entities that process the actual payment of a monetary transactionthe payment method corresponds to how that payment is formalized (that is, how the buyer delivers the money to the seller).

In general, online payment gateways offer various payment methods (also online), while it must be the seller himself who must manage and support the offline payment methods (directly on the WooCommerce platform of the online store).

Let’s briefly look at the main payment methodsboth online and offline:

• • Cash on delivery. Managed by the seller, it allows the buyer to pay for the purchase when the product arrives at their home. It usually carries an additional charge.

• • Payment by check. Managed by the seller, the buyer must send him a nominative check for the amount of his purchase. Once the seller accepts the check, he ships the product to you.

• • Wire transfer. Managed by the seller, the buyer makes a bank transfer to the bank account provided by the seller. Once the seller validates the transfer, he sends you the product.

• • Bank account charge. The payment of the purchase is made through the online payment gateway, on the buyer’s bank account, which will have been previously configured and authorized.

• Card payment. In this case, payment for the purchase is made through the payment gateway, and is charged to the buyer’s credit or debit card, which will have been previously configured and authorized.

For the first three options (cash on delivery, payment by check and bank transfer), WooCommerce includes two configuration sections to incorporate and display them in the online store:

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In all three cases, it requires the seller to activate the corresponding offline payment method and configure it with the necessary data for the buyer to proceed with the payment.

For example, in the case of a bank transfer, the seller must fill in the following form, which will be shown to the buyer at the time of payment:

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Online payment gateway plugins for WooCommerce

In its default installation, WooCommerce already includes basic support for the PayPal online payment gateway, which may be sufficient for our needs and, being a known gateway, also valid for most of our clients.

However, we can also use other payment gateways through WordPress plugins; for example, because they have lower commissions or additional payment options that PayPal does not contemplate.

Next, we are going to see the most popular online payment gateways with support for WooCommerce, learn about their most outstanding features and what we can do with each of them.

In this way, we will be in a better position to choose one or the other based on our needs and the preferences of our potential customers.

PayPal for WooCommerce

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It is by far the best known and most used online payment gateway in most e-commerce stores. With over 200 million customers, it supports over 20 currencies and is one of the easiest payment gateways for buyers to use.

WooCommerce includes direct support for the PayPal Standard version, but we can install plugins to use two other PayPal services: PayPal Express and PayPal Pro.

In all its versions, PayPal is valid for customers with and without a user account in the payment gateway, and can be used to process credit card payments, bank account charges and the available balance of the user’s account.

Regarding PayPal Express for WooCommerce, it offers a faster and easier user interface than the Standard version, allowing the user to make the payment with a few mouse clicks on the online store’s own website, except for the payment authorization, which is done on the PayPal website.

For its part, PayPal Pro for WooCommerce allows fully customize the checkout process within the online store, making it as intuitive and fast as possible, within the website, without the need to enter the PayPal platform.

The Standard and Express versions charge a commission of 3.4% for each purchase process, plus a fixed cost of 0.35 cents, while the Pro version, in addition to this commission, has a monthly fee of 30 euros. All these values ​​are reduced according to the monthly sales volume of the online store.

You also have the option to create a .

Stripe for WooCommerce

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it is one of PayPal’s main competitors as an online payment gateway and shares many of its features. From the customer’s point of view, the money transfer process works…