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The 4 Best WooCommerce Payment Gateways to Maximize Profit

By Jolina Regin
Joel Taylor
Edited by Joel Taylor

Published November 30, 2021.

Woman inputting credit card details onto computer

Did you know that there are over 70 payment gateways available for WooCommerce businesses? With so much to choose from, it's hard to know which payment gateway is best for your WooCommerce store.

Choosing a payment gateway is as important as choosing between WooCommerce vs. Shopify. It is essential to select the right payment gateway from the get-go to avoid future complications from changing at a later stage.

In this article, we'll cover factors to consider when choosing a WooCommerce payment gateway to maximize profit and the four best WooCommerce payment processors for your e-commerce store.

How to Choose the Best WooCommerce Payment Gateway to Maximize Profit

First, let’s discuss why a payment gateway is important and how it affects profits.

A payment gateway could maximize profits or lead to losses. If customers don’t find their preferred payment methods, they’ll sometimes not pay at all, leading to an increased abandoned cart rate. However, if customers go through a seamless WooCommerce payment processing system at checkout, they’ll pay for the products and could even buy more.

Here are some of the things you should consider when choosing a payment gateway:

The Location of Your Business and Customers

Like any other business, there are both advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce. An advantage is that you get to reach more customers globally. If you have foreign customers, you should consider if the payment gateway is available to them. Other gateways require the merchants to be in specific countries.

Your Business Type

If your business is subscription-based, you'll require a WooCommerce payment gateway integration system that accepts subscriptions or automatic payments.

Having a payment gateway that handles in-house payments is best If you have both physical and online-based businesses.

The Cost of the Payment Gateway

Apart from transactional costs that every payment gateway provider requires, some require additional WooCommerce fees like setup costs, subscription fees, and sign-up fees.

Compare the 4 Best Payment Gateways for WooCommerce

PayPal

Having a market share of 50%, PayPal is the most popular and trusted payment gateway known to customers. Especially for new e-commerce businesses that are not known, adding a popular gateway makes customers feel secure to buy products.

Pricing PayPal is free for buyers, while merchants pay 2.9% plus 30 cents for every transaction and an extra 1.5% fee for international payments.

Some of the Key features of PayPal include:

  • Support in over 200 countries and for 26 currencies.
  • Support for commonly used credit and debit cards.
  • An in-built fraud prevention and risk management system.
  • No monthly charges, gateway fees, or subscriptions.

Some of PayPal's cons include:

  • Restricting the plugin to those who have a PayPal business account.
  • Not handling payments on your site, but instead redirecting customers to the PayPal checkout page.
  • Not working for recurring WooCommerce subscription-based businesses.

Stripe

Supporting over 135 currencies in over 26 countries, Stripe has gained popularity in e-commerce businesses. It's best for international businesses and those that are both online and in-house.

Stripe is one of the WooCommerce custom payment gateways that provides options to customize your checkout, making your business unique. This is just one of the many differences between Stripe vs. PayPal.

Pricing Similar to PayPal, Stripe has no setup or monthly costs and charges flat rates of 2.9% fee plus 30 cents per transaction and an additional 1% fee for international payments. Also, an additional 1% for currency conversion.

Some of the key features of Stripe include:

  • Easy handling of recurring payments that are great for subscription businesses.
  • Processing refunds automatically.
  • Accepting payments directly to your WooCommerce store both on the web and on mobile.
  • Supporting digital payments like Google Pay, Apple Pay, Microsoft Pay, and Alipay.
  • Free integration for your WooCommerce store with no setup or monthly costs.

Stripe has very few cons, with the only significant one requiring some software development expertise to use the open API and tools.

WooCommerce Payments

WooCommerce Payments is a great plugin that accepts payments online. It offers a deeper integrated payment system for your store and a better checkout experience.

To use it, you’ll need a WordPress account and the JetPack plugin installed.

Pricing Similar to Paypal and Stripe, WooCommerce Payments is free, having no setup costs and monthly fees. It only charges the standard transactional fees of 2.9% and 30 cents per transaction with an additional 1% fee for non-US issued cards.

Some of the key features of WooCommerce Payments include:

  • Viewing all your payments and cash flows while also managing revenue on your store’s dashboard without logging into other sites.
  • Accepting payments in over 135 currencies and common credit cards, debit cards, and digital payments.
  • A streamlined checkout where customers don't leave the WooCommerce store.
  • Managing refunds easily.

Some of WooCommerce Payments' cons include:

  • Limiting use to certain countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and a few others.
  • Having to install the JetPack plugin to your WooCommerce store before being able to use it.

Authorize.net

Authorize.net is one of the best WooCommerce payment plugins. It has great features, especially for startups, such as advanced fraud protection tools that protect both customers and your business.

Pricing Authorize.net charges monthly fees of $25 in addition to the 2.9% + 30 cents base rate per transaction.

Some of the key features of Authorize.net include:

  • Accepting all major credit and debit card payments as well as PayPal.
  • Handling refunds, subscriptions, preorders, allowing customers to try products before having to pay.
  • Allowing customers to save payment details for faster checkouts next time.
  • Providing reminders to users with automated payments for future transactions.

Some of Authorize.net's cons include:

  • Availability only to merchants in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and Europe.
  • Monthly subscription fees of $25.

Should You Change From Your Existing Payment Gateway?

It is worth it to change to a different gateway if your current gateway isn't providing beneficial features for your business. You may face some issues while changing gateways, but it will be worth it in the end.

If you want to offer your customers more payment methods, adding more gateways is better. We recommend having at least 2 WooCommerce payment gateways to better serve your customers.

Conclusion

Having a payment gateway is the last step to closing a sale. It’s the point where your customers put in credit card information and release funds. If you choose the wrong payment gateway, customers will leave your site and buy from other stores.

PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and WooCommerce are the top 4 best payment gateways for e-commerce businesses.