9 Best Payment Gateways for WooCommerce

If you are using WordPress for your eCommerce store, in all probability, you are also using the WooCommerce plugin to manage eCommerce operations and payments. WooCommerce is a trusted and secure platform providing end-to-end functionalities for online selling businesses. One of the crucial ingredients for your success with this platform is the selection of a payment gateway in WooCommerce. While it might seem simple at first, you can get confused, given the plethora of payment gateways available in the market.  

One of the most underrated elements of user experience in the online shopping journey is the payment process. As an entrepreneur, building a scalable eCommerce business, you are focused on creating the best product strategy, an intuitive user interface and a lightning-fast service experience. However, one of the most distressing experiences for your end-user can be when the payment does not go through at the end of the shopping journey. On the flip side, smooth payment flows and flexible payment options can boost customer stickiness and create a buzz around your brand. While you need a third-party gateway to manage your payments, the selection, configuration and design of your payment process should be an integral part of your overall store strategy. Let’s take a deep dive into choosing the best payment gateway for WooCommerce.

Content Index

• What is a WooCommerce Payment Gateway?
• How Does a WooCommerce Payment Gateway Work?
• Choosing a Payment Gateway for WooCommerce
• Add a payment gateway in WooCommerce
• 9 Popular Payment Gateways for WooCommerce
• Multiple Payment Gateways on WooCommerce with Nimbbl
• Frequently asked questions
• Conclusion

What is a WooCommerce Payment Gateway?

By default, WooCommerce offers four core payment options for any store. These are Cash on Delivery (COD), Cheque payment, Direct Bank Transfer and PayPal standard. The first three do not require any online payment. The fourth one redirects the customers to the PayPal site to complete the payment. 

If you want your customers to pay online seamlessly in your eCommerce store, you need to integrate a payment gateway. It allows you to collect payments from your customers. Think of it as the software equivalent of a payment terminal used at a physical store. It transfers the money from the customer’s account to your account smoothly and securely.

There are 80+ WooCommerce payment gateway extensions on the Woocommerce marketplace. You can easily plug in any of these extensions or download the woocommerce payment plugin directly too. The next step is to plug it into your platform with just a few configurations and settings. You require minimal or no coding knowledge for integration. 

How Does a WooCommerce Payment Gateway Work?

While the customer completes an online payment in just a few seconds, several transactions happen between the payment processors, banks and your WooCommerce platform in the backend. Card payments follow these typical steps:

1. After the customer enters the card details or net banking credentials, the payment gateway checks the validity of the details entered. 
2. The payment gateway also conducts special checks to identify and prevent fraud attempts. 
3. Once the details are validated, the issuing bank—the customer’s bank—checks if the necessary funds are available. If yes, it debits the money.
4. The payment gateway deducts a certain percentage of the money as its transaction fees and transfers the rest to the merchant’s bank—your bank. This settlement to your account can be immediate or after a settlement period. 

How to Choose a Payment Gateway for WooCommerce?

There is no single best payment gateway for WooCommerce. Instead, here is a checklist for selecting one based on the specific needs of your customers and the nature of your business:

a. Compatibility with WooCommerce

It makes sense to select a payment gateway available as a WooCommerce extension. These are fully compatible with WooCommerce and WordPress and can install easily.

b. Compatibility across devices

The checkout page UI should be responsive and compatible across devices of different screen sizes. The majority of online shopping takes place on mobile devices.

c. Price

Payment gateways charge around 1-3% of the transaction value as processing fees. This percentage varies with the mode of payment and the payment volume. Some gateways also charge an annual maintenance amount and one-time initial setup fees.

d. Local payment options

It is essential to check whether your payment gateway supports the payment modes that are most convenient for your target audience. For example, if your store caters primarily to Indian buyers, it is prudent to select a payment gateway that supports UPI payments for business. 

e. Support for recurring payments

If you offer subscription-based services, you should go for a payment provider that supports recurring payments through mandates to deduct money automatically from the customer’s bank account or card. You should also check if the gateway supports subscription suspension, cancellation and re-activation.

f. Support for BNPL payments 

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) payment methods are seeing a massive adoption across popular merchant categories. The convenience of stacked payments, faster purchases, higher conversions and an increase in average order value are some of its many benefits, slowly making BNPL a preferred choice over cards.

g. Payment experience

A poor payment experience which is filled up with OTPs, form fillups, and multiple clicks often leads to cart abandonment. Selecting a payment experience biased toward getting more conversions for your business should be the top priority while choosing a payment partner.

h. Ease of onboarding

Documentation and onboarding of your business is the first step after making an account with a payment gateway provider. It includes providing the necessary legal and tax-related documents to the payment gateway provider for verification. It also entails verifying the merchant bank account to be used for payouts. 

How to add a payment gateway in WooCommerce?

Once you have selected, setting up a payment gateway in WooCommerce is pretty straightforward. Assuming you have already installed WordPress, WooCommerce and PHP for your online store, you do not need to code to integrate a payment gateway in WooCommerce. 

1. After creating an account with the payment gateway provider and getting onboarded, you can download the woocommerce payment plugin zip file and upload it to the plugins folder in WordPress. 
2. Log into your WooCommerce account, navigate to ‘Settings’ and click the Payments tab. Along with the default WooCommerce payment methods, you will also see the newly installed payment extension. Click ‘Enable’.
3. Click ‘Manage’ and enter the details as provided by your payment gateway provider. Most payment providers also provide a test setup to try out the payment experience before making it live on the eCommerce store. 

9 Popular Payment Gateways for WooCommerce

Let’s look at the 9 popular providers for WooCommerce.

1. PayPal

PayPal is a trusted brand and very effective for accepting International payments as it accepts 100+ currencies. It supports subscription payments and BNPL options and meets global compliance standards such as PCI and PSD2 and offers 24×7 fraud monitoring tools. It is suited for small businesses that require a no-code integration setup with minimum customisation.

2. Stripe

Stripe is the biggest competitor of PayPal in global payments. Though it is second to PayPal in prevalence, it is more flexible in customisation. It blends better with store branding and aesthetics because of customisation options that PayPal does not provide. Technically, Stripe meets the highest compliance standards and supports recurring and BNPL payments.

3. WooCommerce payments

It is a native payment extension by Woo itself. It scores the highest in compatibility with WooCommerce stores. However, it is unavailable in India currently. 

4. Amazon pay

Amazon Pay is a trusted brand and is available as a plug-in for WooCommerce stores. Though it supports multiple payment modes, it falls short in providing robust features for subscription payments. 

If your business relies majorly on recurring payments, you can give it a pass. A detailed comparison of payment gateways for subscription payments is available here.

5. Square

Square is a WooCommerce payment gateway that offers a flat rate for online and in-person transactions. If you wish to run your online and physical stores on a single payment gateway, Square is an excellent option to explore. It is not available in India.

6. Nimbbl

For Indian customers, UPI is one of the most convenient and fastest-growing modes of payment. Nimbbl provides an easy-to-integrate plugin for WooCommerce that supports Magik UPI, a fast payment experience on UPI payment methods. It also offers one-click checkout on BNPL with the likes of Lazypay, Simpl and Paytm postpaid along with traditional methods like cards, net banking and wallets.

7. Razorpay

Razorpay is a feature-rich and fast-growing payment gateway provider in India. It is also available as an extension for WooCommerce with developer-friendly APIs, plugins, and libraries for WooCommerce. 

8. PayU India

PayU is a widely used and one of the early entrants in the payment gateway market in India supporting a wide range of payment methods.

9. Cashfree

Cashfree is among the top providers in the country with a wide range of products including payments, payouts, early settlements, international and more.

Multiple Payment Gateways on WooCommerce with Nimbbl

Nimbbl goes one step ahead of other providers and enables you to integrate multiple payment gateways into your WooCommmerce store via a single account. These include some of the largest payment aggregators of India like Razorpay, PayU, CC avenue, Paytm and more. 

Moreover, it provides you with the power to add or move to another payment gateway at any time without new coding requirements. You can pick and choose based on the pricing, discounts and features offered by the payment gateway providers at any given time. 

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

Through this blog, we attempted to answer one of the most difficult questions for business owners i.e How to choose a payment gateway. With Nimbbl, you get the leading multiple payment gateway providers in one place along with a one-click checkout for your WooCommerce store.