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The Best Payment Gateways for WooCommerce

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If you are setting out to create a WooCommerce online store, one of the first things you need to decide is how to collect payment for your products. If you want to process credit card transactions, then you need a payment gateway. A payment gateway is a service provider that can process credit card payments on your behalf. The payment gateway collects payment information and processes the transaction with the banks involved. There are hundreds of options to choose from and choosing which is best for you can be overwhelming. To help decide which is best, I have outlined several key questions that I believe you should consider.

Questions to help you choose the best payment gateway:

  • How well does your payment provider integrate with WooCommerce? Is there a free and easy-to-use plugin that will manage all the necessary communication between my site and the payment gateway, and is that plugin well supported?
  • Does your payment gateway provide support for Paypal, Apple Pay, Andriod Pay, and others? Plus, can those integrate right into the product or cart pages? More and more customers are wanting to use options other than typing their credit card number directly into your site. You are losing out if you don’t have built-in integration with these options.
  • Does your payment provider offer Anti-fraud tools that integrate with the WooCommerce plugin? One way you can be leaking funds is through payment disputes. For example, if someone uses a stolen card on your site, you have to deal with the potential loss of product. On top of that, payment gateways often charge an extra fee beyond the refund of the disputed transaction. Good anti-fraud tools such as AVS, CVV, and risk threshold rules to 3D secure can help prevent fraudulent transactions.
  • Does your payment provider offer low rates and no monthly fee? I’m always surprised by how many payment gateways charge a monthly fee to use their services on top of the credit card processing fees. Since almost everyone charges the same processing fee of 2.9% and 30 cents per transaction, this extra monthly fee is unnecessary.

After considering the above criteria, there are two payment gateways that we feel stand above the rest, Braintree Payments and Stripe. I recommend Braintree over Stripe, but they are both clear winners.

Braintree Payments

Braintree is a PayPal company and is a world-leading payment gateway option. Their account registration is not quite as smooth Stripe and requires manual approval and credit checks. They have been aggressively improving their WooCommerce plugin, making it all the more appealing to the everyday online shop owner. Another key that makes them a great option is their advanced fraud tools which are easy to add with their plugin. Plus the integration with PayPal payments is very nice and user-friendly.

Pros:

  • No monthly fees.
  • Free plugin to integrate with WooCommerce.
  • Integration with all subscription/membership plugins.
  • Support for Apple Pay, Andriod Pay, Google Pay and Venmo Pay.
  • Best integration with PayPal.

Braintree WooCommerce Extension:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/woo-payment-gateway/

Stripe Payments

Stripe, like Braintree, is one of the world-leading payment gateway options. They have a smooth account registration, low fees, and best of all, a great free plugin extension. The plugin extension is managed by WooCommerce and has become very reliable over the last couple of years.

Pros:

  • No monthly fees.
  • Free plugin to integrate with WooCommerce.
  • Integration with all subscription/membership plugins.
  • Support for Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Microsoft Pay.
  • Supports store owners located in more countries than Braintree.

Cons:

  • Integration with PayPal requires an additional plugin which, in our opinion, is not as good as Braintree’s extensions integration.

Stripe WooCommerce Extension:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-gateway-stripe/

One Response

  • Brilliant Advise !
    In my research I have come to the same conclusion and have also chosen for “Stripe” and can say it works brilliant. Fast and good. Super good care and support when needed and a very handy dashboard when you have more websites enabling you to administer all of them in one place with various handy features it has on display. This “woocommerce stripe payment gateway” fitted in very well with no issues and cooperates with WordPress, Woocommerce and Kadence Themes which is in my eyes very important as to avoid costly compatibility conflicts which can occur with third party Plug-ins. This combination works brilliant at my place and I can really recommend it to others!

    Reply

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