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Pro Tip: 5 Top WooCommerce Payment Gateways

Selling products online also means collecting payments through virtual channels. There are plenty of online gateways you can use to process your store’s sales, but if you choose the wrong ones, your sales might plummet in return.Setting up WooCommerce payment gateways can be overwhelming. There are multiple options available at various price points, and narrowing down your choices could become a source of stress.

Fortunately, there are some helpful resources available to guide you through choosing and setting up payment gateways in WooCommerce. Once you understand the pros and cons of each popular option, you’ll be well positioned to make an informed decision.

In this article, we’ll explain how WooCommerce payment gateways work. We’ll also review five popular gateway options, and discuss the plugins that are available for each one. Let’s dive right in!

Table of Contents

What Is a Payment Gateway?
WooCommerce Payment Options

WooCommerce Payment Gateway – PayPal
WooCommerce Payment Gateway – Stripe
WooCommerce Payment Gateway – Square
WooCommerce Payment Gateway – Amazon Pay
WooCommerce Payment Gateway – 2Checkout

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What Is a Payment Gateway?

Payment gateways are services designed for merchants, which take care of authorizing and processing payments. This can be done via credit or debit card, in addition to direct payments.

It’s important to note, however, that payment gateways are not just for eCommerce shops. They can be set up for online stores in addition to brick and mortar shops, or you can manage a combination of the two through Point of Sale (POS) devices.

Either way, payment gateways facilitate the transfer of information that takes place between the payment device or portal and a front-end processor, such as a bank. The portal itself could be a mobile phone or a website (just to name a few examples).

WooCommerce Payment Options

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that enables you to set up an eCommerce store, and lets you manage products, orders, and even coupons from your dashboard. However, accepting online payments through your store also requires one or more payment gateways. Without them, you can only take cash or checks.

A WooCommerce payment gateway is a direct channel connecting your store to your merchant account with a service such as PayPal or Stripe. The payment gateways and merchant accounts you choose will depends on multiple factors, including:

Where your business and customers are based
What currencies you’d like to accept
The plugins available for integrating your site with various payment gateways

It’s important to understand that without a payment gateway, you won’t be able to accept online payments. Fortunately, while the merchant accounts may involve fees, the integration plugins for WooCommerce are often free or inexpensive.

1. WooCommerce Payment Gateway – PayPal

PayPal is by far the most popular online payment gateway for most types of stores. It boasts over 200 million customers, supports over 20 currencies, and its incredibly easy to use if you’re purchasing something.

On the business side of things, you’ve got the PayPal Pro payment processing service, which supports customers with and without accounts on the platform. You can use PayPal Pro to process credit card payments and purchases made with user balances. This feature enables users to send money to each other, request payments, and use their account balance to make purchases on millions of stores.

Finally, PayPal Pro also enables you to customize your store checkout process, making it as intuitive as possible. Once the money from your sales hits your account, you can withdraw it to your bank or store it in your account’s wallet. As far as WooCommerce stores go, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t include PayPal as part of your payment processing options. Plus, there are plenty of plugins you can use to integrate it painlessly with your store, such as PayPal Express Checkout.

2. WooCommerce Payment Gateway – Stripe

Stripe is one of PayPal’s main competitors when it comes to online payment processors, and it’s easy to see why. As a customer, the process of transferring money works just the same. However, when it comes to the store side of things, Stripe offers a few advantages over PayPal.

For example, Stripe supports metered billings and subscriptions, which makes it ideal if you’re using WooCommerce to sell digital services. The platform also enables you to store customer information. This is great news as you can analyze that data to find patterns and develop better marketing strategies.

Finally, Stripe offers an overall better customer service experience than PayPal. The only downside is Stripe is only available for businesses in a limited number of countries. If you operate your WooCommerce store from one of those countries, Stripe can be an excellent alternative and complement to PayPal. As far as WooCommerce integration goes, your best option is to use the free Stripe extension, created by the developers of WooCommerce.

3. WooCommerce Payment Gateway – Square

Known originally for developing compact credit card swiping technology that could be plugged into a mobile phone, Square has continued to develop both payment software and hardware.

Key Features:

Transaction fees. You’ll pay a 2.9% fee, plus $0.30 per transaction. There are no other monthly fees for Square’s eCommerce solution.
Checkout experience. As a seller, you’ll find your preset inventory options the same whether you’re taking a payment online, on your mobile phone, or at a Square POS terminal.
POS systems. You can also purchase a Square register or an iPad-friendly terminal. These range from $199 to $799, and monthly plans are available.

In addition, the WooSquare plugin is designed to integrate and synchronize your WooCommerce products with Square:
WooSquare – Square for WooCommerce plugin banner

WooSquare comes in a free version, as well as a premium tier for $69. The main difference between the two options involves the way you can synchronize your products between services. The free version has various manual synchronization options, while the premium version offers automated synchronization.

4. WooCommerce Payment Gateway – Amazon Pay

As a highly-trusted name in online retail, Amazon also offers a digital payment gateway option for eCommerce sites. Designed to cover just about any needs businesses and organizations of all sizes might have, Amazon Pay offers a broad selection of features.Key Features:

Transaction fees. Amazon offers its payment gateway services for 2.9% plus $0.30 per domestic U.S. transaction.
Checkout experience. Customers can use Amazon Pay seamlessly without creating a new account, and might be more willing to complete a purchase with a recognized and trusted name on the checkout process.
POS systems. Amazon Pay does not currently offer a POS system.

A free WooCommerce integration plugin does exist for Amazon Pay. This tool makes it easy to integrate Amazon Pay with your WooCommerce products, including subscription items and recurring payment options:
Amazon Pay WooCommerce Payment GatewayThe Amazon name brings a pretty powerful sense of security and trust along with it. Adding it as your payment gateway might be the differentiator you need to boost conversions and purchase completion on your website.

5. WooCommerce Payment Gateway – 2Checkout

2Checkout isn’t as well-known as PayPal or Stripe, but this payment processor shares a lot of similarities with its famous counterparts. This gateway also deals with credit cards, and it offers free setup for all its users. As far its fees, it charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.Where 2Checkout shines is when it comes to selling digital products such as subscriptions. The processor doesn’t charge you any additional fees for recurring charges, which is something other gateways do, such as PayPal.

Moreover, 2Checkout is available in over 200 countries, which gives it a reach rivaling PayPal and outshining Stripe. However, they do charge you an additional 1-1.5% for international transactions. Overall, we would recommend using 2Checkout as an alternative or complement to PayPal, as they share so many features and serve the same market. It’s also easy to integrate into your store, thanks to the 2Checkout Inline Checkout plugin from the team behind WooCommerce.

Grow Your Business With GK Web Agency and WooCommerce

GK Web Agency provides enterprise-quality WordPress hosting, with the versatility to handle almost any WooCommerce configuration you can dream of.

Whether you’re running a small digital business or launching a new eCommerce platform for large-scale retail, GK Web Agency has a plan that suits your needs!

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