Thinking of updating your online shop? Does your shop suffer from a high bounce rate or high cart abandonment rate? It’s likely because customers experience difficulty completing their transactions. Keep in mind most consumers use a debit or credit card for paying, especially when purchasing online via an e-commerce website. It’s a convenient way to pay as it’s instantaneous and you don’t have to get up from your seat to make a payment.
That’s why you need to take advantage of this and start accepting credit card payments. However, there are some things you have to note first. One is that payment gateways usually charge a fee per transaction.
If so, you need the cheapest way to accept credit cards. Want to know how to? Read on and we’ll teach you how to begin.
Determine Whether You Need a Shopping Cart
WordPress sites either need a shopping cart or not, depending on what they’re selling. Small sites may not need one if they’re not selling too many things or if they’re selling a service. In these cases, the simplest way for them to accept payment is through a form or through a “Buy Now” button.
Those with multiple products would do better with a shopping cart. This makes the payment processing easier for both seller and buyer.
The WordPress credit card plugin to download will depend on whether you plan to have a shopping cart. If not, you’ll have to integrate a payment gateway into a checkout form. If you do have a shopping cart, you’ll need an e-commerce plugin.
Either way, you’ll need a plugin to get the job done.
Download a WordPress Credit Card Processing Plugin
WordPress has a lot of plugins for you to try on their own website. You can find them by going to the Plugins tab and then searching for a keyword. In this case, you can try searching for “credit card” and a bunch of plugins will appear.
You’ll notice that the most popular payment gateways are PayPal and Stripe. You should already be familiar with both as these are popular even outside WordPress. In this article, we’ll be talking the plugins that integrate these options onto a form or a shopping cart.
PayPal Buy Now Button
This particular plugin lets users pay for an item they like on your site using PayPal. It inserts a button on your site (wherever you place it), which redirects the users to PayPal.
When you download and install the plugin, you’ll get a new PayPal Button option in the settings on your dashboard. Click it to configure the settings; set the language and currency first.
Then, enter your PayPal Merchant ID or the email address you use for PayPal. This is where the money goes every time a user clicks the button and makes a payment.
You don’t have to limit your PayPal transactions to your personal bank account either. You can link your PayPal to a separate business bank account or hire a financial accountant to oversee it. If you’re not sure how, click for more help here.
This plugin is rather straightforward, but you can customize the style of the button in some ways. It also lets you choose if you’d rather have it open a new window or stay in the current one.
That’s it for the settings; all you have to do next is to insert the button on your page. Launch the editor and you’ll see a PayPal Button next to “Add Media”. Click on it, and it will further ask you to put an item name, an item price, and the alignment.
WPForms and Add-ons
The WPForms plugin is an easy-to-use form builder. It’s free, but you have to pay to access the add-ons for payment processing. After paying, you have to activate it by putting your license key in the settings tab.
You have 2 payment options here: PayPal and Stripe. To install these add-ons, head on to the add-ons tab under WPForms, then search for both. Click “Install” and then “Activate” once it appears.
Then, you’ll have to connect both payment options to your accounts. You can configure them under WPForms > Settings > Payments. Input your Stripe and PayPal information, make sure they’re correct, and save.
The next step is to create a form or edit an existing form with these payment options. To do that, add the Multiple Choice and Credit Card fields.
Change the name of the Multiple Choice field to “Payment Method” or something similar. Then, put PayPal and Stripe as the choices.
The Credit Card field should only appear if the user chooses the Stripe option. You’ll have to set a conditional logic for this, which also goes the same for the PayPal option.
Go to the payments tab, and enable both PayPal Standard and Stripe payments. Then, scroll down to set a conditional logic for each option.
WooCommerce and Add-ons
If WPForms are for forms, WooCommerce is for a complete e-commerce platform on your WordPress site. With that said, it has a shopping cart, making it the better option for bigger sites.
PayPal and Stripe are both built-in options that cost almost nothing. You can activate them as you’re setting up your online store, but if you’ve already finished setting up, you can download them as extensions on wordpress.org.
What’s great about these is that the PayPal Powered by Braintree extension doesn’t charge a fee for the first $50,000. After which, you only have to pay 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. Stripe charges the same fee per transaction as long as the charges per year are below $1 million.
Both options allow the users to pay within your site, meaning the extensions won’t take them to another website to complete the payment.
If you want other options, though, there are other WooCommerce extensions you can download. PayPal Express Checkout is another option, as well as Amazon Pay, Simplify Commerce, and Klarna. These are also free to install, although they charge transaction fees.
There are other payment processing extensions available for WooCommerce. Remember to review each one, though, including the fees as the costs can build up fast.
Learn More About the Cheapest Way to Accept Credit Cards
The cheapest way to accept credit cards may be different for every store. After all, most options charge a fee based on earnings. Be careful in reviewing the terms so you don’t end up paying more.
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