Since you’re here you should already know that Stripe is a powerful payment gateway that you can use to accept payments from many Credit cards and debit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB, Diners Club, and many more. There are are also known for their low transaction fees and availability in 39 countries around the world including European countries such as Ireland, Switzerland, and United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and even available for India.
If you include the Stripe payment gateway in your WooCommerce store you can make the best use of it. It is the best alternative WooCommerce payment gateway if you don’t want to use PayPal or you want to provide an additional payment gateway alongside PayPal. Also if you have a physical (brick and mortar) store along with your online store, you can make use of the Stripe Point of Sale system along with the online store.
In this article, we will see how to setup the WooCommerce Stripe payment gateway to accept payments from Credit cards and Apple Pay.
Table of Contents
How to Configure WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway for Credit Card
To accept payments via Stripe payment gateway from your WooCommerce store you need to install and setup the WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway free plugin.
Follow the steps below to install and setup this plugin:
- Go to your WordPress Admin Dashboard
- Here, go to Plugins → Add New
- In this page type ‘WooCommerce Stripe Gateway’ in the Search Bar
- You could find many Stripe payment gateways plugin here, but click ‘Install’ on the 1st search result that is the ‘WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway By WooCommerce’ as you see in the image below
- After installing, ‘Activate’ the plugin
- Once the plugin is activated, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Payments
- On this screen, you can see all the Payment Options available in your WooCommerce Store
- Enable ‘Stripe – Credit Card (Stripe)’ option by ticking the checkbox and click the ‘Save Changes’ button that you find at the bottom of the page (This option is enough of receiving payments from multiple Credits cards mentioned earlier and also for Apple Pay)
- Then click the ‘Manage’ button that you find on the Stripe – Credit Card (Stripe) option and it will take you to this option’s settings
Setting Up the Stripe – Credit Card Payment Option:
In the setting page of the Stripe – Credit Card payment option, you will find multiple options that you can use to configure your Stripe payment gateway.
I will explain the important options on this page that you need to setup Stripe Payments.
First, tick the ‘Enable Stripe’ box (if it’s not already enabled) and give it a proper Title and Description that you see fit.
Finding the Stripe API Keys
Then we move on to connecting Stripe with your WooCommerce. For this, you should already have a Stripe account. If you don’t have a Stripe account first go and create a Stripe account before you move to the next steps.
If you already have a Stripe account, then login to your account and go to the dashboard.
In the dashboard go the API Keys option and you can find your Publishable and Secret Keys as seen in the image below.
If you wish to test this Stripe payment gateway before you go public with it, then choose the ‘View Test Data’ option in the API Keys section. Then it will show the Test Publishable key and Test Secret Key.
Back to Your WooCommerce Store
- Now go back to the Stripe – Credit Card options in your WooCommerce store and tick the Enable Test Mode option and enter the Test keys of Stripe API.
- If you do not want to test them then you can leave the box without a tick and enter the Live Publishable Key and Secret Key.
- There is a Statement Descriptor field in the options. It is the description that will appear on your customer’s bank or credit card statement. Fill the proper description here.
- Tick the checkbox that says Capture Charge Immediately, otherwise you will have to manually take the payment within 7-days.
- If you want to give your customers the ability to use a card saved on their account for future purchases, then tick on the box that says Enable Payment via Saved Cards. The card details are stored in Stripe Servers so the costumes card details would be safe.
- Then you can directly click the Save Changes button below and now your WooCommerce store will be able to accept Credit Card payments using Stripe payment gateway.
- If you want more details on all of the options on this page check out their docs.
How to Configure Apple Pay with WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway
To enable WooCommerce Apple Pay with the Stripe – go the Stripe-Credit Card settings page and tick the Payment Request Buttons to enable Payment Request Button for Apple Pay that will show in all the Apple Pay compatible devices.
If you have already added the Stripe API Keys to the WooCommerce settings, then you can move on to the next step. If not, please add the API keys as mentioned above for Credit Card payments.
- On your Stripe account Dashboard, go to Payments → Apple Pay → Add New Domain
- Enter your WooCommerce store’s domain and you will get a verification below.
- Download the verification file and add it to your website through FTP. You can access your site FTP using the FTP client provided by your hosting provider. This process is similar to Google Search Console verification.
- After your domain is successfully verified you will get a notification in your Stripe Dashboard
- Now to customize the Apple Pay button go back to your Stripe settings and you can find some options such as Payment Request Button Type, Theme, and Height, as you see in the picture above.
- Use these options to customize the Apple Pay button and then click ‘Save Changes’
The Payment Request Button of WooCommerce Apple Pay will appear in all of the Apple Pay compatible devices like in the image below and your customers can buy products with just their Fingerprint or Face ID.
List of Devices Compatible with Apple Pay
Note: Stripe also has Payment Request Buttons for other methods of payments such as Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and Microsoft Pay. You can enable them in a similar way. If you want us to cover these additional payment methods please tell in the comments section.
Additional Payment Methods with WooCommerce Stripe Payments Gateway Plugin
If you have a market-specific WooCommerce store or selling to limited countries then you would want to use some specific payment methods. So the WooCommerce Stripe plugin also provides additional payment methods such as Alipay, Bancontact, Giropay, iDEAL, EPS, Multibanco, Przelewy24 (P24), SEPA Direct Debit, and SOFORT. Also, WeChatPay (Chinese) and Klarna (Swedish) are in the public Beta phase.
WooCommerce Stripe – Subscriptions
When you’re selling subscriptions on your WooCommerce store, you can do it in 2 ways with Stripe:1. Using WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin
Here you can use the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin to manage the subscriptions and can use Stripe payment gateway along with Stripe Customer and Card token to process recurring payments. But the subscription data cannot be managed on Stripe Dashboard and you can only manage from WooCommerce Dashboard.2. Use Stripe Subscriptions
When you use the Stripe Subscriptions all the transactions and billing will be handled by Stripe and you can find the subscriptions information in the Stripe Dashboard. You can make use of all the features that come with Stripe Subscriptions such as Flexible billing, Renewal rules, Business analytics, and more.Stripe Checkout
Stripe Checkout is a drop-in payment option that has optimal payments flow designed to drive conversion. If you don’t want to use the WooCommerce checkout but want to make use of Stripe Checkout you can get it from the GitHub account of the WooCommerce development. It is not part of the WooCommerce Stripe plugin yet but we can expect it in the future.Other WooCommerce Stripe Plugins
We just saw how to setup the WooCommerce Stripe payment gateway with the official WooCommerce extension. But it is not without limits and issues. Few customers have complained that WooCommerce Stripe is not working for them. There have been some issues reported with Payments Request Button that are necessary for Apple Pay. If you want more options, then you should look into some other WooCommerce Stripe plugins.WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway By WebToffee
If you want a WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway that is user-friendly and customizable you should go for this free plugin by WebToffee. You can control which Credit card you accept and see your transaction from your WordPress dashboard. You can use it to accept Apple Pay and Ali Pay. It also has a premium version that accepts Debit cards.
Stripe For WooCommerce By PaymentPlugins
Stripe for WooCommerce is a conversion-focused WooCommerce Stripe payment gateway plugin that mainly focused on accepting payments for Google Pay and Apple Pay. It is a free plugin and it also accepts Credit Card payments.
Stripe Payments
It is a free WordPress Stripe Payments plugin, that you can use without the WooCommerce plugin. You can use this plugin if you don’t have an online shop but simply want to get payments from customers. In this case, using WooCommerce is unnecessary and kind of an over-kill. So you can use this plugin to connect your WordPress site with the Stripe payment gateway and can also ember the payment button anywhere on your site.
Stripe Fees – How much does Stripe Charge?
Stripe doesn’t charge any fee such as monthly charges or setup fees.
Since they have a “Pay As You Go” policy, they only charge for each transaction that is made.
Their fees vary for each country. Please go to Stripe’s official site to find out the fee for your country.
Stripe Fees – USA
- Credit and debit cards – 2.9%+30 ¢ per successful card charge for all cards
- International payments – + 1%- additional fees and another 1% fee may apply if there are currency conversions.
Stripe Fees – India
- Domestic payments in Rupees (INR) – 2% for most cards issued in India and 3% for cards issued outside of India.
- International payments in 135+ currencies – 4.3% for cards issued anywhere and additional 2% for currency conversions.
Note: The fees here are listed as seen on June-2020. For current pricing details see the official Stripe Pricing page.
WooCommerce Stripe Connect
Stripe Connect is a new service started by Stripe and it is mainly for businesses that have to send out payouts. It connects to any website such as a business website or an online marketplace site with a powerful API to handle the payments. You can collect payments from customers and pay them out to sellers or service providers with Stripe Connect.
For the basic version of Stripe Connect with Standard accounts they don’t charge any additional charge and you get a full Stripe Dashboard for connected accounts.
If you have an Express or a Custom account for paying multi-party payments globally you would have to pay some additional payments such as $2 monthly fee for an active account and other fees for payouts.
There is no official WooCommerc extension for Stripe Connect. But there is a 3rd party YITH Stripe Connect for WooCommerce plugin that integrated WooCommerce and Stripe Connect to split payments made on your WooCommerce store by credit cards among your business partners (vendors or sellers).