If there’s a topic we’ve missed, let us know, and we will be happy to dive into it.
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- The role of advanced APIs in enabling seamless payment flows for MedTech innovators
- Maximising positive impact: the synergy of AI, sustainability, and comprehensive payment solutions
- Deconstructing payment processing
- How to accept payments on social networks?
- What are the best payment gateways for WooCommerce?
- What is the best payment gateway for marketplaces and platforms?
What are the best payment gateways for WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a plugin provider used to build online eCommerce stores on the WordPress platform. A plugin is a software used to install extensions in the browser created by any third party. A plugin can also add new features and processes to existing computer programs or gateways.
In the case of WooCommerce, when added to your existing WordPress website, the site becomes an eCommerce store where you can sell goods and services and process payments.
WooCommerce is one of the world’s most popular eCommerce gateway plugins because it is a free alternative for small and new business owners looking for a place to sell their goods and services products. Even better, the WooCommerce gateway lets you access other features such as flexible shipping methods, process invoices, and payment systems. A powerful toolkit for eCommerce selling, WooCommerce is an ideal payment solution gateway for businesses that want to launch their own online stores.
WooCommerce was first developed by a WordPress theme developer known as WooThemes and is thought to be used by nearly four million online websites worldwide to process sales or orders.
The WooCommerce gateway’s main features include:
- Assistance with processing products, shipping fees, and tax calculations.
- WordPress-assisted Search engine optimisation and other direct online marketing features.
- Thousands of compatible extensions, gateways, and plugins to further its capabilities.
- A simple yet powerful gateway interface perfect for use by both experts and beginners.
The advantages of using the WooCommerce gateway
As the world’s most popular open-source eCommerce gateway platform, it’s no surprise that there are many benefits to using WooCommerce on WordPress:
Cost
It’s free to download, install and use on WordPress. That’s music to the ears of new business owners trying to manage costs and reduce fees when running a company through an online gateway.
Flexibility
WooCommerce can be used all over your eCommerce WordPress website. Add payment options such as payment gateway buttons, fee-exclusion codes, and forms anywhere from the homepage to the checkout page.
Easy-to-use analytics
Processing numbers can be confusing. But with WooCommerce’s gateway custom analytics, they don’t have to be. Get weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports on the metrics that mean the most to your online business.
Management tools
From managing orders to delivery updates and from customer engagement tools, and tax and fee settings to inventory features, the WooCommerce gateway offers more than just a place to collect payments and fees.
Aids customisation
Make your eCommerce store to your liking with over 40 design themes. What’s more, most of the themes are fee-free to implement.
The “woo-universe”
Using the WooCommerce gateway opens the door to a world, or universe, of compatible WordPress plugins. Add new features to your eCommerce gateway store at the click of a button.
Supports growth
With thousands of WordPress plugins to choose from, you might not see the need to add new features to your online eCommerce gateway store. But as your business grows, it could become clearer that you need more capabilities to match your ambition and keep up with your competitors and customer orders.
As a one-stop payment platform gateway, Fondy understands the need for businesses to be flexible and to accept various payment methods in a variety of currencies. Want to know more about us? Great! Check out our About Fondy page and discover what inspires us and how that can benefit your business, no matter the size.
Disadvantages of the WooCommerce gateway
Every coin has two sides. Just like any product, set of goods, or services, there are pros and cons to everything, depending on who you ask.
Some of the most commonly expressed disadvantages of the WooCommerce gateway include:
- Free might not necessarily mean free. The WooCommerce plugin itself is free on WordPress, but for some, it might not end up being completely free in the long run. As well as your domain name, and server (or web hosting) fees, you’ll also need to pay for payment processor fees every month. Other options, like the Shopify gateway, cost more, but in the end, you’re paying for the added benefit of a more complete eCommerce platform, security, features, and fees included.
- Limited gateway customisation. Despite a large number of free WordPress plugins and themes to change the design of your store, there are still limits to WooCommerce. That means that if your competitors also use WooCommerce online, it could be difficult to distinguish your brand from others.
- No help at hand. One of the complaints aimed at the WooCommerce gateway is that there’s little to no customer service at hand. The only helping hands on offer are those of the WooCommerce gateway community, a WordPress specialist, or from a WooCommerce gateway expert, who will probably come at a hefty fee.
- Growth limitations. Yes, WooCommerce can be a great platform and gateway for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but it might not be ideal if you want to go global. Although it’s a good “problem” to have, you’ll probably have to upgrade your eCommerce platform once you start to increase your traffic and sales. Expanding your business online will often mean you’ll have to accept more fees for larger platforms and gateways.
- Open-source security. Open-source software means any software that’s original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. That also means that open-source software, like WooCommerce and WordPress, are open to cyber-attacks and other threats. Cyber attacks aren’t only harmful to your business, they can often come with heavy fees to correct.
How to set up WooCommerce
To use WooCommerce, the first requirement is to have a running WordPress website. From there, head to your dashboard to search for and install the WooCommerce gateway on your website. After a few moments, the ‘install’ button should turn into an ‘activate’ button. After clicking on the activate button, the Setup Wizard module will help you create your WooCommerce store by completing the following steps:
- Enter your basic information. The wizard will ask you to enter basic information about your store, including the physical address, product information, delivery fees, refund fees, and preferred settings for things like languages and the currencies you accept.
- Select a payment processor. Choose from the available payment processing options, and WooCommerce and WordPress will take care of the rest. For a one-stop payment solution, select Fondy. That way, you have access to over 300 payment methods, such as Visa and Mastercard, in 150 currencies. And if you need global reach, that’s sorted, too, because Fondy accepts payments in 200 different countries and territories.
- Shipping and delivery costs. Here you’ll need to decide who will pay for the shipping. One option is to include it as free for your customers, and the other is to have it calculated based on your customer’s location before the sale is complete. If you need to exclude certain regions, you can edit this information here, too, to accept or exclude certain countries.
- Select optional add-ons. The last stage of installing the WooCommerce gateway for use is to select some optional add-ons. If you do choose to include one or more in your WooCommerce package, there’s a wide range available. You can select free or subscription fee add-ons such as social media platforms and email marketing networks.
That’s it, sort of, anyway. After adding your add-ons and extra plugins, you can always edit them in your eCommerce store afterward.
Payment gateways for WooCommerce
With WooCommerce, you have two primary options when it comes to your payment gateway, the WooCommerce Payments plugin or a third-party WordPress plugin like Fondy WooCommerce.
Usually pre-installed with WooCommerce, choosing the WooCommerce Payments gateway affords your customers many features, including their choice of languages, currency fee displays, and preferred payment method when finalising their checkout. The payment methods you add to your eCommerce store will be displayed only during the checkout. The only time when a payment option won’t appear is if that method isn’t compatible with your customer’s location.
Currently, the available payment methods accepted on WooCommerce Payments are:
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WooCommerce also supports a variety of payment gateways through extensions that can easily integrate multiple payment services into your WooCommerce checkout flow.
With a third-party extension/gateway like Fondy WooCommerce, you usually have a wider range of payment options. In the case of Fondy, it’s a one-stop solution for global payments, so expect hundreds of payment methods and global currencies, including using bank cards, online banking, and online mobile payments. Even better, your customers can choose which currencies to accept, the languages they wish to complete the purchase, and which card networks like Visa or Mastercard are accepted as payment.
Fondy WooCommerce’s One Page Checkout option makes it easy to turn any page into a checkout page. Customers have the opportunity to add or remove products from their cart and complete payments without leaving your page. For time-sensitive promotions, checkout fields can also be added to product or landing pages.
Getting started with Fondy WooCommerce as your plugin for your eCommerce store is simple, and you can start accepting payments from customers and creating online invoices almost straight away. For extra peace of mind, payment plugins like Fondy WooCommerce regularly undergo PCI DSS certification checks, in addition to having their own accepted anti-fraud systems.
Creating invoices with WooCommerce
You need to add a plugin to your existing account to accept, generate and send invoices to your customers from your WooCommerce store. With plugins such as WooCommerce PDF Invoices, you can send custom invoices as PDFs, complete with your company logo and branding. All you need to do is edit and accept the order details each time you complete a new sale. These order details should include the invoice number (usually auto-generated by the WordPress plugin), shipping order address, fee details, and the terms of payment.
Simply go to your WordPress dashboard and activate your chosen plugin to get started. After that, return to your WooCommerce dashboard to check if the plugin has been correctly installed. Finally, select Run the Setup wizard to add the elements essential to making your invoice look professional. Although invoices aren’t legally binding, a signature from you and your customer on an existing invoice can offer some type of guidance should a dispute or fees arise later down the road.
Attaching an invoice displaying all costs and fees to all purchase emails is always the best practice when selling online goods. However, you can choose to exclude the WooCommerce invoice from certain emails if there’s no need for one.
Recurring WooCommerce payments
Just like other features, such as invoicing and email marketing, there are multiple plugins available to create recurring or subscription payments.
Most of these gateways offer a ton of subscription-based features such as multiple subscriptions, recurring total changes, subscription suspensions, cancellations, and reactivations.
As well as a reliable stream of revenue, there are many advantages of installing a recurring WooCommerce plugin:
Time management
Both you and your customers can save time by not having to spend time making and processing transaction orders. The payment gateway, in conjunction with the recurring payment plugin, will do the laborious work for you. In addition, you won’t have to spend time chasing late payments and allocating fees.
Customer retention
Subscriptions with your customers mean that they are already secure “inside your store”. With tailored marketing and great customer service, they won’t want to go elsewhere. A recurring payment helps maintain this relationship over the years.
Business strategy
Recurring fee payments mean you can correctly estimate your comings and goings. That way, you can make better decisions regarding your company’s strategy.
Trackable payments
Store all of your payment history in one place. Recurring fee payments will most likely come with accurate records that are easier to accept, track and find if need be.
How to add Apple Pay on WooCommerce
Despite WooCommerce and WordPress’ popularity and flexibility, there isn’t a direct way of receiving Apple Pay payments. Apple Pay is a type of digital wallet and mobile payment solution that functions the way that a debit or credit card does. Unlike a debit or credit card, Apple Pay means that customers don’t need to add their debit or credit card details when buying goods and services, as the “wallet” stores this information digitally.
Instead, you’ll need to configure Apple Pay on your WooCommerce store with a secure payment gateway provider plugin like Fondy.
Using Apple Pay is a popular payment because of its convenience and brand name. The Apple brand is synonymous with quality and trustworthiness, meaning your customers will have peace of mind when paying for goods and services.
Some other benefits of integrating Apple Pay on your WooCommerce site include:
Lower cart abandonment
By having Apple Pay already in your merchant payment flow, you can provide your customers with one location without the need to redirect them to an external site or app. As a result, users are less likely to abandon their shopping carts and proceed to pay by credit card or debit card.
Higher conversions
A “good” consequence of lower cart abandonment is more conversions. If your customers don’t meet any obstacles, such as incorrect languages, payment methods, and currencies, they’re more likely to accept further prompts and complete the purchase cycle.
Lower fraud and chargebacks
As Apple Wallets are securely stored on iOS devices, they usually need biometric data like Face ID or Touch ID to be accessed. This means that it’s extremely hard for thieves and fraudsters to commit crimes even if they somehow have your smartphone or credit card details.
Increased data security
Apple Pay doesn’t keep any information about your customers. That way, Apple Pay with WooCommerce makes purchases more secure than normal payment gateways because Apple Pay transactions rely on device-specific identification and accept unique sales codes.
Accessibility via third-party plugins
To access WooCommerce Apple Pay payments, you need a reliable payment gateway. A one-stop payments solution like Fondy makes it simple to provide Apple Pay functionality to your eCommerce store, customise your bank credit card or debit card settings, and you’re good to go.
How to add the Google Pay gateway on WooCommerce
Just like Apple Pay, Google Pay is quite complex to integrate directly into your eCommerce store hosted by WooCommerce and WordPress.
That’s because WooCommerce doesn’t come with any default electronic payment options. To add an electronic payment gateway, you’ll need a skilled developer or developers to write unique code to integrate the particular payment processor with your WooCommerce store.
Employing the skills of a developer, either in-house or freelance, can be very costly, especially for small to medium-sized enterprises or SMEs. Fortunately, there’s a ton of existing code that has already been written by someone else that can be used by anyone.
Pre-existing code is also known as a plugin, and crucially, it means that individuals with little to no coding experience can benefit from and provide some of the most complex code on the market.
And just like Apple Pay, the best way to add pre-existing code is to use a third-party payment processor like Fondy that supports Google Pay. Then you can add a plugin like Google Pay for WooCommerce to your eCommerce account, and you’re halfway there. Google Pay for WooCommerce lets users make transactions in your app or website using any of their credit or debit cards stored in their Google account. First of all, you need to connect your payment gateway account to WooCommerce, then install the Google Pay WordPress plugin. After that, return to your list of plugins on your WordPress admin page to set things off. Then:
- Choose a title and description to be shown to customers on your checkout page.
- Leave the merchant identifier set to whatever is displayed.
- Select a button style.
- Click the ‘Save changes’ button.
That’s all. Your checkout page now includes the option to pay using Google Pay. After that, you’ll have the option of choosing where your Google Pay buttons appear on your secure checkout page.
Best plugins for the WooCommerce gateway
Want to know which plugins you need for your WooCommerce eCommerce store? Do you also want to sift through the thousands of plugins and get to the ones that will make a difference to your business? Well, you’re in the right place.
Below are some of the best WooCommerce and WordPress plugins that you can add to your online store today:
MonsterInsights
If you need to get to grips with your merchant website’s analytics, MonsterInsights is one of the best tools on the market. Discover which credit cards are popular, the products and promotions are working well, and which ones need optimisation.
All-in-One SEO
Getting more organic traffic is vital to building your WooCommerce merchant store long-term. All-in-One SEO can help you set up strategies that help your customers find your store and products easily.
Advanced Coupons
Offer your customers all types of coupons, such as shipping and discount, and credit coupons, with the Advanced Coupons plugin. This essential plugin solves the problem of WooCommerce’s limited coupon options.
Easy Affiliate
As many businesses know, affiliate marketing is a major marketing channel that can get your products and brands in front of the right people. For that task, Easy Affiliate is one of the best all-in-one affiliate tools for the WooCommerce gateway.
Uncanny Automator
This clever plugin works best when you’re not online. For example, If someone visits your website while you’re away from the office, you can program a response. Say if people visit a certain page, you can make sure a special or fee-free offer pops up to entice them into converting or signing up.
The HubSpot WordPress
If you need a robust customer retention system and contact management system plugin, HubSpot WordPress is your best bet. The Hubspot WordPress plugin will help keep track of your customers and their every interaction with your merchant website’s pages. This includes abandoned carts caused by incorrect credit card numbers or details.