Are you looking for the best WooCommerce payment gateways to build your ecommerce store?
From experience, choosing the WooCommerce payment gateway (or any payment gateway for that matter) that works best for your situation is really important when starting out.
Once things start scaling, it’s a massive hassle to have to change payment gateways.
Trust me, the second you want to switch payment gateways, your current gateways will make that process a mild version of hell.
Getting all your payment tokens and other payment data from the customers that have paid is very time consuming and difficult.
So, in my opinion, it’s always best to find the right WooCommerce payment gateway for your situation from the beginning.
In this article, we’re going to go over the 5 best WooCommerce payment gateways that will work perfectly for anybody, and that means YOU.
If you’re ready to dive in, let’s go!
What Is A WooCommerce Payment Gateway?
A WooCommerce payment gateway is any payment provider that works and connects to WooCommerce.
In other words, a payment gateway in WooCommerce is any payment provider that allows a business to take payments in exchange for selling goods or services.
Worldwide there are over 900 payment service providers in the world with a whopping 300 being in Europe and North America alone.
That being said, that doesn’t mean that all these payment gateways are compatible with WooCommerce.
The good news is that there’s no shortage of gateways that can be connected to WooCommerce, with their office website stating there are over 100+ payment providers to choose from.
No matter what provider you choose for your WooCommerce payment gateway, remember these points:
- Each payment provider requires you to create an account
- Each payment provider will take a percentage of sales for their processing fee (typically 2.9% and $.30 for each transaction)
- Each payment provider has a list of prohibited businesses that they won’t support
How To Choose The Best WooCommerce Payment Gateway
There’s a few things to consider when it comes to choosing the right WooCommerce payment gateway for your business.
1. Cost
Cost is the first thing to consider when it comes to choosing the best payment gateway for WooCommerce.
Aside from the fees we mentioned above, there’s a few other things you have to find out when it comes to cost.
Do you have to buy any actual equipment?
Are there any monthly or yearly subscription fees that you have to pay?
Do you have to pay any sign-up fee charged by the payment provider?
Most of the time, especially with the popular payment providers (which we’ll discuss later) and running an e-commerce (online) store there are not really any other cost factors upon start up.
2. Location
One of the most important things you need to remember when choosing the best WooCommerce payment gateway for your WordPress website is that not all payment providers work in every country.
And that works both ways. Some payment providers don’t work with businesses that will be processing from a specific country.
On the flipside, not all payment providers have the ability to accept payments from people in specific countries.
So if you’re selling your products or services Worldwide, you have to make sure that the payment gateway you’re choosing for WooCommerce has the ability to accept payments from the countries you want to sell from.
The good news is that the top WooCommerce payment gateways we’ll go over later in the article all accept Worldwide payments.
Accepting payments from the locations necessary for your business should be no problem provided you stick to one of the payment providers mentioned down below.
3. Support For Subscription Payments
Understanding the types of payments accepted for each specific payment gateway is part of the due-diligence required before you set up your online store.
Because of the different business models out there, some people accept one time payments, while others do subscription based payments.
Some of the payment providers in the market today don’t accept subscription payments.
So if you are somebody that’s looking to put your customers on a membership or subscription style payment then make sure the payment processor that you’re looking to use for your WooCommerce store enables you to use that option.
While not standard out of the box, WooCommerce does have an extension that allows you to accept subscription payments which works very well.
How Many Payment Gateways Do I Need?
In order to accept payments, of course you’re going to need at least one.
And if you’re thinking, “well Josh, why would I need two payment providers for WooCommerce?”, then let me break it down for you.
Whether or not you’re using WooCommerce to accept payments, having multiple payment options is a great thing.
A lot of big named brands and businesses have at least two payment gateway options.
The most popular choice would be to choose a payment provider that accepts credit and debit cards directly (like Stripe) and pair that with another company like PayPal.
Senior data scientist Shoresh Shafei explains that having multiple payment gateways is always good because it boosts the flexibility of the business.
I just want to make it clear though, that overstressing about using multiple payment gateways is not necessary during your initial start-up phase, but you should definitely consider it once you get things going.
Top WooCommerce Payment Gateways For WordPress
Now the we understand what to look for when it comes to choosing the best WooCommerce payment gateway, let’s explore which ones actually make the top spot.
#1 Stripe
Stripe is by far the hottest payment provider to accept credit and debit on your website.
Aside from the popularity, WooCommerce offers direct support to use Stripe as your payment gateway.
Millions of companies use Stripe to accept payments on WooCommerce.
The ease in which you can set up the payment provider along with the support from both WooCommerce and Stripe makes it the top choice when it comes to selecting a payment gateway for your WooCommerce site.
Stripe supports all the top credit cards, and in addition to that they also accept Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Alipay.
On top of that, Stripe supports both one time charges and subscription payouts and is available in over 135 currencies and over 40 countries.
#2 PayPal
PayPal is another payment gateway that offers built-in support for WooCommerce.
Whether personal, business, or for ecommerce, PayPal has a solution for most every person.
While PayPal is supported in more than 200 countries and regions, there are some restrictions in certain countries.
Be sure to confirm that PayPal will work to process payments in your company before choosing your payment gateway.
Keep in mind that the standard PayPal extension offered by WooCommerce only accepts PayPal business accounts.
The one disappointing thing about PayPal is that they actually redirect your customers to the PayPal checkout page instead of offering an on-site checkout experience.
Not only will that detract conversion, but it also disrupts your branding experience.
#3 PayPal Payments Pro
PayPal Payments Pro is a premium extension offered by WooCommerce that allows you to take credit card payments from PayPal directly on your site.
One thing to note is that PayPal Pro is only available in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.
In addition to that, PayPal Payments Pro also requires a PayPal Pro Payflow account which is a little harder to get approved for than the regular PayPal merchant account.
One more thing to note is that it is not compatible with WooCommerce Subscriptions, so you can’t accept recurring payments.
#4 Square
Square is another great gateway if you’re using WooCommerce. Square is a popular choice for businesses that have physical locations because of the easy set-up process.
Currently, Square offers payment processing services in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the UK.
Whether you’re operating physical locations, or you’re running a completely online business you can easily integrate Square to your WooCommerce account.
The fees associated with Square is their standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
A cool feature that Square offers is that all of your payments and inventory automatically syncs to your Square dashboard which means you’ll never have to update it manually.
#5 Authorize.net
Authorize.net is a great choice to use for your WooCommerce store because it’s a diverse payment gateway that has great support and runs extremely well with WooCommerce.
In addition to accepting credit cards, you can also accept eChecks through your WooCommerce store.
To connect Authorize.net to your WooCommerce store, you have to get their premium extension that allows the integration.
That being said, Authorize.net also allows subscription based payments through WooCommerce as well, which makes them a great choice for service providers and other recurring business models.
One thing to note is that it is harder to get approved with Authorize.net because of their underwriting process.
It’s hard to get approved if you have no processing history, bad credit, or and/or no credit at all.
Otherwise, it’s a great option.
Which Is The Best WooCommerce Payment Gateway
While there are tons of options when it comes to the best WooCommerce payment gateway, the smartest option is the one that offers the best flexibility for your business.
- Lowest transaction fees
- Location and availability in your area
- Smooth user experience for your customers
With those things factored in, we recommend Stripe as the best WooCommerce payment gateway.
Aside from those factors, it’s very easy to set up, offers payment services to over 40 countries, accepts over 135 different currencies, and provides a great and seamless checkout experience.
Unlike PayPal, Stripe allows your customers to go through an inline checkout experience without ever leaving your website, which increases conversion and trust during the checkout process.
As mentioned above, most businesses do offer multiple payment gateways for their WooCommerce stores which provide the absolute best option for their customers.
My recommendation for using multiple payment gateways would be to pair a provider like PayPal with Stripe.
That gives your customers the best of both worlds.
Being able to pay via credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, AND the ability to use their PayPal account along with all the benefits that PayPal offers their customers to secure their purchases.
Using multiple payment processors (like Stripe combined with PayPal) is proven to increase conversions and add revenue to the bottom line.
Hopefully we’ve helped you find the best WooCommerce gateway for your business.
You're probably interested in finding the right WordPress host as well.
If you have any questions or need any help, simply leave a comment down below and we’ll get back to you.
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