What’s the best Prestashop plugin for international payments?

Paypal, Stripe or Rapyd: What’s the best Prestashop plugin for global eCommerce?

Just having a couple of the right payments features can end up creating a world of difference for your global sales. To increase your revenue and improve the customer experience, you’ll want to optimize for the most critical ecommerce and payments features. The right Prestashop plugin (or add-on as Prestashop calls them) can elevate your customer experience by reducing friction points along the checkout process and greatly decreasing cart abandonment. As a merchant, you should also investigate key merchant features, such as the ease of payment,  built-in reporting metrics, pricing, and security and anti-fraud features.

Below we explore the best Prestashop payment options for international businesses, discussing three of the most popular plugins: Paypal, Stripe and Rapyd.

What’s the best Prestashop plugin for global eCommerce?

PayPal for Prestashop Plugin

​​Paypal is an online payment service that lets consumers and businesses send and receive money worldwide. PayPal operates in over 200 markets and supports more than 25 currencies, meaning that it can be a good option for companies looking for an international payment gateway provider.

Paypal Customer and Merchant User Experience

Paypal is well-known and widely used and known by consumers and offers online customer support. It’s easy to set up an account and start accepting payments. There’s no contract, and you can cancel anytime. PayPal offers an easy setup and does not require advanced technical knowledge, making it better suited for small businesses than mid to large-sized companies seeking tailored, customizable solutions.

Paypal Supported Payment Methods

Paypal allows customers to make payments with either their PayPal account or credit card, even if they don’t have a Paypal account. They accept payments via PayPal balance, a bank account, PayPal Credit, debit or credit cards, or a rewards balance.

Paypal is also used by businesses to pay other businesses. However, it does not support standard business payment methods and has high fees, making it a costly option.

What Countries are Supported by Paypal for Prestashop?

Customers from all over the world can send payments via Paypal. However, Paypal for Prestashop currently only supports merchants located in the US and European nations. Merchants in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Oceania will want to consider another Prestashop payments provider.

Paypal for Prestashop supports France, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Poland, USA, Belgium, Netherlands, Greece, Denmark, Czech Republic, Portugal, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Lithuania,  Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta, Liechtenstein.

Paypal Pricing

Paypal’s pricing is similar to other payment processors. Merchants can expect to pay around 2.9 percent + 0.26 € per successful transaction, but this can depend on the country and payment method used.

Rapyd for Prestashop Plugin

Founded in 2016, Rapyd has quickly become a global contender in international payments. Beyond supporting major enterprise clients from Uber to Rappi to Ikea, Rapyd also provides extensive offerings for small and medium business clients to support global customers with hundreds of local payment methods. These features include hosted checkout, digital invoicing, and easy-to-setup payment plugins for Prestashop and other ecommerce sites.

Rapyd Customer and Merchant User Experience

Rapyd’s plugin allows you to add more payment methods when necessary and uses smart checkout technology, integrating with the one-page checkout Prestashop offers. This enables you to take the personal information of your customers and optimize your business for the popular payment methods in each location. In turn, your Prestashop store will improve the customer journey and reduce cart abandonment.

The Rapyd Prestashop plugin easily integrates with your online store without the need for in-house developers. This shortens set-up time after KYB approval and means that you can take orders soon after setting up.

Rapyd Supported Payment Methods

Rapyd’s Prestashop plugin for international payments supports four methods of payment:

1. Cards
2. Ewallets
3. Bank transfers
4. Cash vouchers

The range of options is beneficial when your business is looking to optimize the checkout flow towards the payment preferences of different countries and cultures. For example, customers in the Netherlands prefer direct bank transfers, whereas Brits are keen on Prestashop credit card payments. By automatically adhering to the payment preference of the location, customer churn and cart abandonment occurrences are reduced.

Rapyd Supported Countries

Hands down, Rapyd supports more global merchants in more countries than either Stripe for Prestashop or Paypal for Prestashop. Rapyd supports Prestashop merchants in more than 50 countries worldwide and allows you to send payments using many different currencies and payment methods.

Rapyd Pricing

The cost of Rapyd’s plugins depends on where your business is registered. UK-owned businesses can expect to pay 0.5% per transaction + £0.10, which is cheaper than Stripe fees. Ireland Domiciled Businesses will pay 0.5% + €.12 for European cards. European businesses will pay 1.2% + €0.25 per transaction.

Once your KYB is approved, you can open a free Rapyd account and begin collecting payments immediately after approval through the Rapyd Prestashop plugin.

Stripe for Prestashop Plugin

Stripe is currently used by over 3 million active websites, with more brick and mortar customers too. Founded in 2010, it has become one of the most popular Shopify and Prestashop plugins but has a limited number of supported countries.

Stripe Customer and Merchant User Experience

By far, the most beneficial feature of Stripe is its sheer range of integrations. Alongside billing, Stripe’s Prestashop plugin facilitates branded onboarding and physical cards, automated tax and revenue reporting, verification (ID) checks and fraud detection, and legal support for small businesses looking to transform into corporations. While Stripe accepts payments from around the world,  is only available for merchants domiciled in a very limited number of countries.

Stripe Supported Payment Methods

Stripe offers six different types of payment methods through its Prestashop plugin, ensuring that you can offer the best ecommerce payment methods for each region:

1. Credit and debit cards
2. Wallets
3. Bank transfers
4. Cash-based vouchers
5. Buy now, pay later

The extensive range of payment methods means that the Stripe Prestashop plug-in can support international payments. However, some countries are restricted from accessing the full range of payment methods, which is something to consider when targeting new markets.

What Countries are Supported by Stripe for Prestashop?

Stripe for Prestashop accepts payments in 135+ currencies. However, Stripe’s website indicates that only merchants located in France, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Mexico are supported. For this reason, merchants located outside of one of these five countries will need to look elsewhere when choosing their Prestashop payment plugin.

Stripe Pricing

Stripe offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model without set-up fees. For European transactions, the transaction fee is 1.4% +€0.24, whereas non-Euro transactions incur a fee of 2.9% €0.24. Settling your account in a different currency incurs an extra fee of 1%. Alternative business models or those accepting a high volume of payments can create a custom package with their Stripe agent.

Merchants should be aware that Paypal has relatively high international fees. This comes out to 1.50% for all international commercial transactions, which can quickly add up for global businesses.