One of the most typical questions that my clients ask me is “What payment gateway do we use for eCommerce?” ok the answer (as usual), it depends. What does it depend on? Well, basically your needs, product, and even your customer profile. Let’s take a look at the current payment gateway options for WooCommerce:
1. PayPal for WooCommerce
It is one of the easiest, simplest and fastest. It is also free, as it comes standard in WooCommerce. Here we have an example of how it looks in the payment process:
The negative part of using this gateway is that its commissions are quite high. You must pay a fixed fee of 35 cents plus 3.4% of the transaction, which I consider extremely high, especially in the case where you have many sales of low amounts.
In addition, PayPal does not issue any type of invoice for its commissions. As they do not have VAT and are headquartered in Luxembourg, they do not have to issue invoices, which always complicates things when making company expense statements.
One last negative point of PayPal is that, like other gateways, it redirects the user to its website. In other words, the user who is shopping on our website goes to the PayPal website, processes the payment there, and then returns (if all goes well) to our website, where the payment is finalized. In short, a little fluid process.
2. Virtual POS (Servired / Redsys / CECA / 4B)
Another option is to do it through a bank. Basically we must go to a bank, and ask for a POS. This is similar to when we do it to ask for the typical “dataphone” with which stores charge customers. But in this case, instead of giving you a horrible thing with a number pad, they give you a PDF with some codes.
Precisely these codes are the ones that we must enter to the extension that we need, depending on the bank from which we contract the POS. Namely:
These extensions create a new payment gateway in WooCommerce (in Settings / Complete purchase) for you to enter that data. As a result, your e-commerce will now be able to accept card payments, and the user will see something like this:
The positive part of doing it with a bank (compared to PayPal) is that the commissions are much lower (less than 1%). But it is also true that they will charge us a lot for a registration of about 100 or 120 euros, and that they also usually require a minimum billing (about €600) or they charge us about €20 for monthly maintenance. But that already depends on the negotiations you have with the bank.
In addition, the same problem that we had with PayPal is repeated. It turns out that the moment the user clicks on the “PLACE THE ORDER” button, they are redirected to the bank’s website (meaning that you are leaving our eCommerce) to make the payment. There you will put your card, verify the payment with the PIN and all that, and then you will return to our website (if everything goes well). Once again, a non-smooth process.
3. Stripe for WooCommerce
And here comes Stripe, the option that I recommend the most. Stripe has an advantage compared to the other options that you can already imagine by now. And it is that unlike those, Stripe does not redirect the user to another website. The entire payment process is done on your own website. The invention remains as follows:
As you can see, this time the user enters the credit card information on the website itself, and by clicking on the “PLACE THE ORDER” button, they do not go to another website, but the payment is processed and the takes you directly to the “Thank You” page, where you can print your purchase receipt.
As you can imagine, this process is much cleaner than in the other two cases, in which the user must leave the web temporarily. The payment process, the smoother, the better. The extension needed to implement STRIPE is .
If you look closely, although this payment gateway is called “STRIPE”, that does not appear anywhere. The user doesn’t even know that STRIPE is being used. And the receipt that will arrive to the checking account does not say anything about “STRIPE” either. You will simply see the name of your business. So there is no confusion at the time of purchase.
The only point that you have to consider when you consider whether to use STRIPE is that you are going to need to contract an SSL for your website. This is a service offered by hosting companies, which can cost around €20 or €30 per year. But considering that we are talking about an ecommerce, I think it is worth it. Especially now that we know that .
As for commissions, they are lower than PayPal but higher than banks. They currently have 30 cents fixed plus a 2.9% commission. In addition, unlike PayPal, they do not keep the balance and accumulate it, but they charge it and deposit it into your bank account. They only do the operation, but you don’t have a com “balance” in Paypal.
final considerations
There are many other forms of payment: cash on delivery, bank transfer, check, store payment, etc. But these three are automatic, that is to say that the payment is made automatically and instantly and the money is received. In this way you can approve the order automatically.
The decision is yours, and it will basically depend on the monthly billing you have and the agreement you can reach with the bank, but in my case and in most of my clients, I always recommend STRIPE.
Doubts, questions, suggestions? For that you have the comments or the form on the right 🙂
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