Payment Gateway Integration
purpose / objective
A payment gateway is essentially a third-party service or tool that you integrate into your website for processing online payments.
This allows your customers to securely pay you for the products and services they buy from you. So every purchase on your online store becomes a three-party transaction between your customer, your payment gateway, and you.
A payment gateway captures the payment information of your customers and processes their payment through various instruments like credit cards, debit cards, e-wallets, etc.
More often than not, you are required to set up a merchant account linked with the payment gateway that you integrate with your website.
All payments processed by the payment gateway are automatically routed to your merchant account, with a processing fee charged for each transaction.
There are multiple payment merchants you can use however the best and most popular WordPress payment gateways are listed below and are selected due to their:
- Region-wise availability
- Data security
- Awareness in the customer market
- Transaction or processing fees charged
- PCI compliance
- Degree of integration, and customization offered
Here are the eCommerce payment gateways for WordPress that I recommend based on the ease of set up, fees and functionality.
- Stripe is PCI compliant and available for business use in 35+ countries and you can accept payments from your customers in more than 135 currencies. You can nominate a bank account and have your profits automatically transferred to your linked account within 2 days. A transaction or processing fee is charged by Stripe which is 2.9% + 0.30 cents as fees per transaction (as at June 2023). Click here for more info.
- Square -is PCI level 1 compliant and offers anti-fraud and layered security for users making payments through the platform. Square allows you to accept payments from a wide array of methods, which are then automatically transferred to your linked bank account on the next business day. Has a per-transaction fee of 2.9% + 0.30 cents (as at June 2023). Click here for more info.
- PayPal – operates in 202 countries and makes it possible for you to accept payments in 25 currencies.PayPal is less customer friendly however as customers are routed to PayPal’s website to complete the payment transaction and thus will have to leave your website to make the purchase. It charges 2.9% + 0.30 cents as fees per transaction (as at June 2023). Click here for more info.
process
At this point you may be asking, “do I need to have a payment gateway?”
That all depends on your website inclusions and how you want your site to function.
If you will be having “eCommerce” which is your online store/shop (i.e. WooCommerce or SureCart) then yes.
If you will be selling courses or subscribtions through the website (i.e. LearnDash or SureMembers) then yes.
If you are not selling anything directly on the website then no.
If you are promoting things on your website to sell but the actual invoicing or sale occurs through your CRM (i.e. 17hats / Hubspot / NetSuite / Keap) or different booking platform (i.e. calendly / Eventbrite / Cliniko) then no.
If you do not need a payment gateway for your website then you can write N/A in the activity and move on to the next topic.
If you do need a payment gateway connected, then you will need to do the following:
- If you already have a payment merchant account, proceed to step 4.
- Do your own research and decide which payment gateway you want to use. It doesn’t have to be one I have suggested.
- Create your own account with that third party service. For Stripe click here. For Square click here. For PayPal click here.
- Provide the login information in the activity so that I can integrate it within your website. I may need to get security codes from you to facilitate this so if that is the case I will be in touch.