Payment is an integral step of the online buying and selling process. You can use a wide variety of Payment Gateway options for WooCommerce to offer convenient options to your customers.
Here you will learn how to select customer’s Payment Gateways.
So what is a payment with a direct payment gateway?
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin for WooCommerce that enables customers to pay for products and services with a payment system. They need an account with the Payment Gateway Company, usually known as a merchant account.
Payment Gateway company has fixed fees and terms for each of them which is quite different from the WooCommerce.com extension subscription.
Reach out to the support to ask questions regarding account fees, terms, and requirements. Some of them offer several options depending on various accounts, transactions, and redirect techniques.
How to Select a Payment Gateway
When choosing and setting up a Payment Gateway, you need to consider the following factors:
- Cost
- Location
- Security
- WooCommerce Subscriptions support(if applicable)
Now let’s discuss each of the factors one by one.
Cost
The payment gateways have a different startup and ongoing costs that comprise of
- Payment gateway purchase, if not free
- Registration fee charged by payment gateway company or processor
- Monthly/annually subscription fees
- Transaction fees
Location
Store location and currency are vital factors. A payment gateway company or processor may only work for merchants in some countries. For instance, Store Owners in Europe and Canada only accept US-based store owners and dollars.
Though customers across the world can use the payment gateway to check out and pay.
Security
Redirect payment forwards customers to the Payment Gateway website to process payment and then redirect back to your website to finish checkout.
Customers purchase and pay directly on your website with the direct payment that requires an SSL certificate as a segment of PCI Compliance.
Store owners who accept payments are liable to protect important customer information such as billing details, email, and shipping addresses.
Many payment gateways need an SSL certificate for successful payments which encrypts communications between your eCommerce website, customers, and payment processor.
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) covers the other steps to secure your website that applies to users storing, processing, and transmitting credit card data.
WooCommerce Subscriptions Support
You may want to sell recurring subscriptions on your website. For example, you should select a payment gateway that supports manual/automatic recurring payments to use the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension(separate purchase).
How Many Payment Gateways Do You Need?
You require a minimum of one payment mechanism to collect payment on your e-commerce website even if it is a manual payment gateway like Direct Bank Transfer. When you offer various payment options, it boosts the possibility of customers checking out and completing payment.
Several payment gateways offer standard payment card fields with “express” payment buttons such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, and the famous WooCommerce Payments that give multiple checkout options to your customers.
Numerous payment methods and gateways confuse customers and complicate your website administration. Select an option suited to your store and business requirements.
Here are the payment options to consider:
Free and Premium
When you pass via the WooCommerce Setup flow, they offer you various payment gateways depending on your store location. They are the Core Payment Options including WooCommerce Payments.
If you want to use something unique, you can choose and buy a Premium gateway.
Core gateways are free options also known as Core Payment Options. To access those payment modes, you don’t need to pay yearly WooCommerce.com subscription costs. But payment gateways charge transactional and other related fees.
You can also use Stripe and Payal as they are two popular payment gateways.
WooCommerce Payments
WooCommerce.com offers WooCommerce Payments that are free to install without set up or monthly fees. The pay-as-you-go fees start from only 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for U.S.-issued cards.
It started in the United States and is now available in 9 more countries to more international merchants in the future.
Premium Getaways
You can find available premium payment options. The Premium Payment Gateway extensions need a yearly subscription to WooCommerce.com for updates, support, and standard transaction fees.
You can filter further by a variety of options in the left sidebar of the search page.
Payment Gateways and the GDPR
When selling your products to customers in Europe, the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework needs to be part of your decision on which payment gateway to select.
The customer information you gather depends on the payment gateway. If you are working with a manual payment gateway like BACS, your e-commerce website won’t process the payment itself as you will check your bank account independently of your website.
The other payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe need to pass information from your website to the payment processor. Select a reliable processor and consider its effect on customer data.
You need to know the sent information and notify customers of their data updates. Interpret what the payment processor does with the information. For instance, the WooCommerce Stripe plugin sends specific customer information to Stripe. You need to disclose this process in your site’s Privacy Policy.
The payment gateway you select needs to have information regarding customer data management.
Bottomline
As payment is one of the most crucial steps in the online shopping process, you should never compromise on it as that would adversely affect the customer experience. No one would prefer to visit your eCommerce website again to buy their desired products.
Though you can implement a variety of payment options, WooCommerce payment gateways can be a great option to consider. They are user-friendly, convenient, and affordable. What more can you ask for? Just use it for your online store.