WooCommerce Payment Gateways Comparison

WooCommerce comes with various payment gateways by default such as PayPal Standard, Simplify Commerce. However, If you want to accept payments on your site via iframe or form, you might need another payment option. In this post, I will compare some of the top available payment gateway options in WooCommerce.

WooCommerce Payment Gateways Comparison

There are a lot of things to consider when selecting a payment processor like where it’s supported, how the transaction fees apply, whether SSL is required or the user will stay on the site during checkout. Since each integration provides different functionality for the merchant, it’s not always possible to provide the same checkout experience with every payment gateway. Lets take a look at some of these points so we can compare the most popular WooCommerce payment gateways.

Supported Country

Before looking for an appropriate gateway integration, the merchant country (where the business is located) will probably be the biggest limiting factor. If you’re in the US you’re not going to be limited by much as most payment gateways support merchant accounts in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and EU, but merchants outside of those regions will probably be limited to PayPal for payment processing.

If PayPal Standard doesn’t work for you, you can easily upgrade to PayPal Pro, Advanced or Express checkout depending on your needs and the checkout flow. Most merchants in the Netherlands use iDeal Mollie to process debit cards on their sites.

PCI compliant payment processors, such as Stripe and Braintree, are growing rapidly and becoming available in all the major countries. Stripe is currently supported in 24 countries while Braintree in 47 countries.

Transaction Fees

In addition to location, you’ll also probably want to weigh the fees charged by each payment processor into your decision. Most popular payment gateways usually charge a small fee on the transaction.

WooCommerce Subscriptions Support

Recurring Billing is a big part of managing subscriptions / memberships. PayPal Standard is built into the core WooCommerce plugin and supports subscriptions so that you can get started right away without another payment. However, PayPal Standard does not support changes to recurring billing amounts, nor does it support date changes for businesses that prefer to bill all customers on the same day of the month. Stripe really stands out here, as its free and supports all WooCommerce Subscriptions features, along with Authorize.net CIM, Braintree, and Intuit QBMS. First Data also supports almost all Subscriptions features (except payment method changes).

Checkout Flow

There are a few different ways to implement payment integrations with a cart system. Many integrations use a direct on-site checkout method, which keeps the user on your site and routes payment information through your servers. Many businesses prefer this approach, as the checkout experience is seamless and allows the business to customize the checkout process. It also reduces the likelihood of abandonment, as customers don’t get nervous when they’re taken to a different site to complete the payment process. In addition to many of the gateway integrations already listed, Authorize.net AIM is also very popular for this sort of checkout integration, as Authorize.net is popular processor, but AIM does not incur additional monthly costs like CIM does.

Direct checkout integrations require an SSL certificate to protect payment information since data is routed through your servers to complete the transaction, which can affect PCI compliance.

If you don’t want to keep customers on your site for checkout due to security concerns, you can use a off-site checkout method instead. PayPal Standard and Express checkout work this way, as customers are redirected to PayPal to complete a transaction, then redirected back to your site so that payment can be processed on PayPal’s servers instead of your own. SSL certificates are not required for off-site checkout integrations since sensitive payment data is not process on your site.

If you want an approach that takes a middle-of-the-road approach, you could look at PayPal Advanced or the Chase Paymentech integration. Both of these integrations iframe the checkout page, which gives the appearance that customers have not left your site, as the checkout form is embedded into the checkout page. However, payment information is routed through the processor’s servers. While this limits flexibility on how the checkout process is displayed, it does add a layer of security for customers.

The exceptions to this are integrations that redirect users through processor’s servers obviously, as transactional data isn’t handled by your site’s server (such as PayPal Advanced or PayPal Express), and integrations like Stripe and Braintree that use client libraries to tokenize payment data before sending it through your servers. Using an SSL certificate covers much of the security needs for a site, and is usually good enough for most stores and payment integrations.

WooCommerce PayPal Payment Gateways Comparison

Since PayPal is used by the highest number of WooCommerce users, here is a comparison of various payment options that PayPal currently supports:

	Supported Country	Customers Leave Your Site For the payments?	SSL Certificate Required?	Price
PayPal Standard	190	Yes	No	Free
PayPal Pro	UK, US, Canada and Australia* (*requires PayPal Pro Payflow account)	No	Yes	$79
PayPal Pro Hosted	Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK	No	No (Will require from 30 September)	$99
PayPal Advanced	US and Canada	Depends on Settings	Depends on Settings	$99
PayPal Express Checkout	190	Yes	No	$79
PayPal For Digital Goods	Australia and New Zealand, Canada, China, Denmark, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, US	No	No	$79
PayPal Adaptive Payments	190	Yes	No (Will require from 30 September)	$79

WooCommerce Authorize.net Payment Gateways Comparison

Even though PayPal provides some advanced checkout solutions, Authorize.net is not actually too far behind. Merchants who are not comfortable running their businesses through PayPal (due to the nature of the business) often prefer Authorize.net. Authorize.net CIM extension provides one of the most advanced integrations for WooCommerce.

	Customers Leave Your Site For the payments?	SSL Certificate Required?	Price
Authorize.net CIM	No	Yes	$79
Authorize.net AIM	No	Yes	$79
Authorize.net DPM	Yes	No	$79

For more information visit the WooCommerce extensions page (affiliate link): https://woocommerce.com/product-category/woocommerce-extensions/?aff=2057