According to Statista, there are 3 most popular ways to pay for online purchases:
- 41,8% of customers use e-wallets;
- 24,2% pay with credit cards;
- 10,6% use debit cards.
Thus, if you don’t accept e-wallets you lose almost half of the potential customers. If you don’t want to lose clients you need to provide several payment ways for them to choose the most convenient one.
Adding a payment gateway is the best solution to the issues of how to setup external payment system on my WordPress website and how to easily accept credit card payments in WordPress.
Thus, if you want to gain more customers by providing convenient payment ways to them, add a payment gateway to your website. In this article, we will tell you what payment gateways are and how to integrate payment gateway in WordPress.
What is a Payment Gateway?
A payment gateway is a hardware and software complex that automates accepting online payments. Thus, this is the answer to the question which is relevant for many aspiring entrepreneurs: how do I accept payments on my WordPress site?
Payment gateway helps to transfer funds from purchasers to online merchants through external payment systems.
Payment systems develop gateways and are responsible for their support. To use them and supply your website with the opportunity of quick and convenient payments, you need just to make sense of how to add payment gateway in WordPress and do this. And in this article, we will give you detailed step-by-step instructions.
What is the Difference Between Payment Gateway and Payment Processor?
A payment processor is a company that processes credit and debit card transactions for businesses. Payment processors transfer funds from one account to another.
A payment gateway is a third-party extension that connects a merchant’s shopping cart to a payment processor. During an online purchase process, a payment gateway evaluates and transmits transaction data. But it isn’t responsible for processing the payment itself. This is the job of a payment processor.
Differences between payment gateway and payment processor
| Payment gateway | Payment processor |
| Connects a merchant’s shopping cart to a payment processor | processes credit and debit card transactions |
| Evaluates and transmits transaction data, but is not responsible for the payment itself | Is responsible for the payment itself |
How Do Payment Processors Work?
They are responsible for 4 things:
- Processing relationships and risk management between companies and between credit or debit card companies and your business.
- Processing personal and financial data of purchasers.
- Writing-off from the client’s card and crediting funds to the company’s account (processing transactions).
- Transferring funds to your bank account.
How Do Payment Gateways Work?
A payment gateway consists of 4 parts:
- A form of payment on a merchant’s website which contains the fields for entering the data needed for a transaction: merchant ID, payment amount, and comments to the payment.
- A payment page on which a client can check the details of a purchase and make a final decision whether to accept or refuse to pay.
- Payment status pages on a merchant’s website. There are 2 of them: “Success URL” and “Fail URL”. The system redirects a purchaser on one of them in case of successful or unsuccessful completion of a transaction.
- Result URL on the merchant’s website. A payment gateway bot calls it regardless of the purchaser’s actions. Even if a client loses connection and can’t go to a payment status page, a result URL appears. It receives data on the past payment transaction and allows making all the needed changes related to this payment.
Why Is it Important to Add a Payment Gateway to WordPress?
Why do You Need to Integrate Payment Gateway in WordPress?
- It makes accepting payments via different systems easy: you don’t need to develop any software by yourself for this.
- It doesn’t require any spendings: you don’t need to buy any hardware for processing data and accepting payments.
- It ensures clients’ personal data security, so your website is trustworthy and safe for customers.
Who Needs to Add Payment Gateway in WordPress?
All commercial websites need to give users a possibility to pay conveniently and safely. Payment gateway is useful for all types of online business:
- online shops;
- online services;
- info business websites;
- delivery services;
- ticket services.
How to Choose the Best WordPress Payment Method
While choosing a payment method take into account 3 parameters.
A Range of Currencies You Accept
Choose a payment gateway that is compatible with the currencies you accept: USD, EUR, GBP, BTC, etc.
Compatibility between Payment Gateway and Bank
Make sure that there are no problems between the selected gateway and your bank.
Coverage of Your Online Business
A gateway must support the languages and currencies of the countries your business works with.
How to Add a Payment Method to WordPress Website
There are plenty of payment methods with various peculiarities, advantages, and disadvantages. Therefore, before starting to talk about how to integrate payment gateway in WordPress website let’s overview what the most popular payment methods are. You will find the essential information about each of them below.
Paytm
This is an Indian payment system found in 2010. It is a pioneer in online payments in India and is the largest marketplace and mobile commerce platform in the country. Therefore, this is an optimal solution for businesses that are targeted at the Indian market. This system provides safe and convenient shopping to more than 80 million customers from India.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| This is the most popular option in India. Therefore, if you are targeted at the Indian market, this is a great solution for your website. | It’s impossible to send or receive funds using UPI services. |
Paypal
This is the largest debit electronic payment system in the world. It allows paying bills and purchases, sending and receiving money transfers to customers worldwide.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| User-friendliness | High commission for merchants: 2.9% of payment sum + $0.3 per transaction. |
| Fast transaction processing | Higher commissions for international transactions. If you work with foreign customers, PayPal charges 4.4% from the total order sum + $0.3. |
| Easy registration process due to which there are millions of users worldwide | Insufficient protection of personal data. There is a risk of their transfer to third parties. |
| No account maintenance fee |
Stripe
This is an American system for receiving and processing electronic payments founded in 2011.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Good test mode. It fully imitates a real one. To switch to live mode you only need just to replace the keys without editing the API. | The coverage is only 40 countries. Accepted countries are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.
If your business is registered in the one that is not on the list you can’t receive payments via this system. |
| Acceptance of popular European payment methods such as Sofort, EPS, P24, Bancontact, and Giropay. | Absence of XML-protocol 3-D-secure support. This technology requires a client to enter a confirmation code which he receives in an SMS message. As Stripe doesn’t support it, it just tries to make a payment without this option. If a bank allows this a payment will be accepted, if not, a transaction will fail. |
| A wide range of additional features: saving information about customers, adding custom metadata when creating a payment to make it easier to navigate the payments, setting a description when paying, and much more. |
Instamojo
Instamojo is a popular Indian payment system targeted at small businesses. It has been processing on-demand online payments since 2012. It allows individual entrepreneurs and small businesses to collect payments online by sharing a link with their audience. Merchants can share links via SMS, WhatsApp, email, or social networks. Besides, they can embed them in websites and blogs.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| No account maintenance fee. | 2% of the payment sum + 3 Indian rupees commission per transaction. |
| Free setup. | Low popularity outside India. Therefore, this is a good option only for businesses targeted at Indian customers. |
| Acceptance of many popular Indian payment ways: Debit Cards, Credit Cards, Net Banking, UPI, EMI, NEFT, and IMPS. | |
| High-quality support by phone and email. |
Razorpay
This is a rapidly developing payment system founded in 2013 in India. It offers a full set of funds transferring solutions for businesses. For example, fast and easy accepting payments from clients or automated payments to vendors or employees.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| No account maintenance fee | 2% commission from each transaction |
| No commissions during 3 months for new users | Payments are not instant. It usually takes up to 12 working hours to process a transaction. |
Woocommerce payments
This is an open-source e-commerce plugin for US-based businesses. It has been providing its services since 2011.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| It is easy to add payment method Woocommerce to a website. | This method works only with US-based businesses. If your business is registered in another country you can’t use it for receiving payments. |
| You can monitor detailed reports on all transactions. | It charges high commissions: 2.9% + $0.3 per transaction for the clients from the USA and 3,9% + $0,3 per transaction for the customers from other countries. |
Google Pay
This is a convenient service for quick online payments developed by a leader in the IT industry. It works on all Android-based devices and makes the online shopping process easy and fast.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Reliable protection of users’ personal data | Compatibility only with Android. Therefore, merchants need to provide other payment options for the clients that use iPhones. |
| Fast transactions | |
| Acceptance of a wide range of popular payment systems: Visa/Visa Debit, MasterCard/Debit MasterCard, American Express, Discover Card, Diners Club, Visa Electron, JCB, Maestro, PayPal in the USA and Germany, EFTPOS in Australia,
Interac in Canada |
Apple Pay
This is a mobile payment system and e-wallet released by the Apple corporation in 2014. It makes convenient, easy, fast, and safe online shopping possible.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Low commissions: 0,15% per transaction | Available only for iPhone users. You need to have another payment option for the owners of Androids. |
| Worldwide coverage |
Amazon Pay
This is an online payment processing service owned by Amazon. Launched in 2007, Amazon Pay has been enabling users to pay for their purchases on external merchant websites from their Amazon accounts.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| It protects the personal data of purchasers and merchants reliably. | Amazon Pay doesn’t accept payments via PayPal. |
| There are no fees and commissions. | Customers need to hold an Amazon account to pay using this method. |
| It is very easy to use. | There is a high risk of transaction failure if Amazon Pay suspects you are not following the rules |
How to Integrate Payment Gateway in WordPress without Woocommerce
WooCommerce is a free extension for creating an online store based on WordPress CMS. Thus, it allows starting a business even with a short budget.
Advantages of Woocommerce:
- Adaptation to all devices, including smartphones.
- Simple catalog filling. You can add products in the same way as posts on WordPress, through an HTML or visual editor.
- Easy integration with third-party trading services.
- Support of different languages and currencies, so you can create an international online store.
Disadvantages of Woocommerce:
- For an online shop to function normally, you need to configure an engine. If you have never worked with a CMS before, this can take quite a long time.
- WooCommerce updates don’t always work well with WordPress right away.
- Most extensions for Woocommerce are paid.
- By default, Woocommerce accepts only 2 payment systems: PayPal and Stripe. If you want to add more of them you need to buy extensions.
- It increases the load on the server.
If you are not going to use Woocommerce then you need to integrate payment gateway in WordPress without it. For this, first, choose another plugin for e-commerce within WordPress. Here are some popular alternatives to Woocommerce:
Ecwid
Ecwid is a free plugin for creating a complete e-commerce system with a shopping cart. It is easy to install and maintain but may cause problems with SEO ranking as it uses Ajax. Also, users who have turned off JavaScript can’t use an online shop based on this plugin.
WP e-commerce
WP e-commerce is a free solution for an e-commerce site based on WordPress with a wide range of features and an easy-to-use admin panel.
Shopp
Shopp is a great plugin with a shopping cart for an online store on WordPress. But, unlike the previous options, it is paid (from $ 55). For this money, you get a software license and the ability to purchase additional plugins for organizing delivery modules and any payment gateways you need.
How to Add Paytm Payment Gateway in WordPress Website
- Download a ZIP archive.
- Unzip it with WinRAR or any similar software.
- Open the folder that you have got from the archive.
- Copy the folder which is called paytm-payments.
- Insert it into /wp-content/plugins/.
- Upload the folder named paytm with the help of the admin panel of Woocommerce.
- Go to WordPress Plugin Manager and make the Paytm plugin active.
- Then go to Woocommerce — Settings — Checkout/Payment Gateways.
- Find paytm at the top of the screen and click on this option to start changing settings.
- Enter the following settings:
- Enable — Enable check box.
- Title — Paytm.
- Description — Default.
- Merchant Identifier — Staging/Production MID provided by Paytm.
- Secret Key — Staging/Production Key provided by Paytm.
- Website Name — Provided by Paytm.
- Industry Type — Provided by Paytm.
- Environment — Select environment type.
How to Add Google Pay Payment Gateway to WordPress Website
- Get registered in Google Pay.
- Choose the checkout.com payment processor.
- Go to Plugins — Woocommerce — Settings — Google Pay.
- Put a check next to Enable Checkout.com.
- Enter title and description. Users will see it on the checkout page of your website.
- Enter merchant ID.
- Customize the button (you can change its type, theme, and language).
- Save all your settings.
How to Integrate Stripe Payment Gateway into WordPress
- Go to Plugins — Add new — Woocommerce Stripe Payment Gateway and click Install Now.
- Create a Stripe account.
- Go to Woocommerce — Settings — Payments — Stripe.
- Put a tick next to Enable Payment Request Buttons.
How to Add Apple Pay Payment Gateway to WordPress Website
For this, you should install Stripe first. You can see the detailed instruction on how to do this in the heading above.
Then move to the following steps of how to add payment method in WordPress website:
1. Log in to dashboard.stripe.com.
2. Go to Woocommerce — Settings — Payments — and choose the Apple Pay option.
How to Integrate Paypal Payment Gateway in WordPress
- Go to Plugins — Add new.
- Enter PayPal WooCommerce into the search line.
- Click Install Now.
- Go to WooCommerce — Settings — Checkout.
- Put a tick next to Enable PayPal Express Checkout.
- Select Live in the Environment option.
- Put a check next to Enable PayPal Mark.
- Enter your live API details: username, password, and signature.
- Choose Sale or Authorize in the Payment Action option.
- Save all settings.
How to Add Instamojo Payment Gateway to WordPress
- Go to Plugins — Add new.
- Enter Instamojo into a search line.
- Once you have found the Instamojo plugin, click Install Now.
- Go to Woocommerce — Settings — Checkout.
- Find Instamojo on the list at the top of the screen and click on it to start editing settings.
- Put a tick next to Enable Instamojo.
- Enter title and description. You can use the following text: Instamojo for a title and Pay via Instamojo for a description.
- Save changes.
How to Add Razorpay Payment Gateway to WordPress
- Download the Razorpay plugin.
- Go to Plugins — Add new.
- Click Upload plugin — Choose file and select the plugin you have downloaded.
- Click Activate plugin.
- Click Settings below the name of the plugin (Razorpay Quick Payments).
- Put a tick opposite to the Enable Razorpay Payment Module writing.
- Enter the title and description that your customers will see on the checkout page.
- Go to the Razorpay Dashboard.
- Generate key_id and key_secret.
- Enter them on the plugin settings page.
- Select Authorize and Capture in the Payment Action option.
- Save all settings.
Other Plugins to Use Payment Gateway in WordPress
There are also many other payment methods that you can install as plugins. Their integration will look like one of those described above. Here are some other popular payment gateway plugins for WordPress:
- Amazon Pay;
- Authorize.Net;
- Square;
- 2Checkout.
Final Thoughts on How to Implement Payment Gateway in WordPress
Now the issue of how to add a payment gateway to my WordPress website will not be so unclear to you. We have given you the main information about payment methods that can be integrated into WordPress. Check their descriptions, advantages, and disadvantages one more time to select the best options for your particular case.
Once you’ve chosen the payment methods you want to add to your website, use our step-by-step instructions on how to add payment gateway in website WordPress. This way, you will boost your online business by providing a wide range of convenient payment methods to your clients. Potential customers will no longer go away because their favorite payment systems are not accepted!
JoinSoft can provide high-quality eCommerce Development Services to you if you don’t have time to create and customize an online platform for your business on your own!
