Learn what you should look for in a WooCommerce payment gateway to grow your cross-border sales and make the most of global ecommerce.
Choosing the right WooCommerce payment gateway is fundamental in achieving more growth by making the online payment process as smooth as possible for both the merchant and the customer. While there are many different gateways available, you should choose the best gateway for you and your customers by balancing functionality, business objectives and target markets.
What to Look for in a WooCommerce Payment Gateway
When it comes to finding the best payment gateway for WooCommerce, there are a number of factors to take into account. As part of your selection process, make sure you consider the following:
Cost
Managing costs is essential when you’re choosing which payment gateway to select. You need to look at the overall picture and the corresponding features as different payment gateways have different rates and fees. Consider whether there are any start-up fees or if will there be any additional fees to purchase later. There will also be other potential fees, including:
- General transactions
- Cross-border transactions
- Foreign exchange
- Chargebacks
- Monthly account fees
- Refund fees
Your initial set-up comes with free Core Payment Options. However, depending on which provider you use you may have to pay additional fees to payment gateways. WooCommerce’s own solution, WooCommerce Payments is free to use but only available in select countries. Choosing a payment gateway extension means you’ll pay a subscription to WooCommerce as well as transaction fees to the payment gateway.
There’s something else you need to consider in terms of credit card processing costs, and that’s the difference between flat-rate billing and interchange plus. Flat rate pricing means transaction processing fees are the same small percentage of the transaction price, so there are no surprises for processing fees. Interchange plus pricing is different because the interchange fee (charged by the card-issuing bank when credit card transactions are processed) will differ based on a number of variables. Some payment processors charge merchants the actual interchange fee along with a fixed margin fee.
With so much to consider, it’s important to find a solution that ticks all of your boxes, for example, flat-rate pricing, transparent foreign exchange fees at or near the market rate, and fraud monitoring included at no extra cost.
Which is the Best WooCommerce Payment Gateway for Your Business?
Locations
You should also consider where your business is based and where your potential customers and target audience are located. Be sure to ask what locations does the payment solution provider serve, and can it support the currencies you and your customers use. By allowing you to accept a wide range of payments from around the world, the right WooCommerce payment gateway or processor can give you a better chance of building a larger customer base worldwide.
Support for WooCommerce Subscriptions
If you offer subscription-based products and use WooCommerce Subscriptions to support sales, it’s important to check that the WooCommerce payment gateway can support recurring payments.
Direct or redirect checkout
If you use a direct payment gateway, your customers will remain on your website throughout the checkout and payment process, while a redirect takes them off-site to the payment gateway’s site to pay, before they’re redirected back again. Redirect means you won’t require an SSL certificate (as part of PCI compliance), but it could impact the customer experience. It’s something to carefully weigh before you make your final gateway decision.