How do I transfer a site that uses WooPayments to a new owner?

This document explains how to transfer ownership of a website using WooPayments from one person to another. Doing so may be called for if, for example, you’ve sold the business to someone else and you need to transfer the website to be under their control.

The first step is to have the new owner create a WordPress.com account for themselves, being sure to note their username and password. This is necessary because all websites that use WooPayments are required to be connected to WordPress.com.

To be clear, the new owner does not need to create a new WordPress.com site. They only need to create an account, which they can do by using the link above.

Next, the existing owner can give the new owner administrator access to the site itself by making an account for them in the WordPress dashboard, under Users > Add New. The WordPress.org documentation has instructions on how to use that page.

Ensure that the Role field is set to “Administrator” in order to give the new owner full access!

The last account that the new owner will need to create is a Stripe Express account, which is what WooPayments uses to process payments. The old owner will need to invite the new owner to create an account like so:

1. The old owner should log into their Stripe Express account as detailed here.
2. Scroll down, and in the Team Members section, click the Edit link.

3. Verify yourself with the code that Stripe will send to your account email address.
4. Click the Add team member button.
5. Enter the email address of the new owner.
   • Preferably this is the same email they used for their WordPress.com account and their admin account on the actual website.
6. Click the Invite button.
7. The new owner will receive an invite link from Stripe in their email.

8. On their device, have the new owner click the Accept invite button.
   • They will be taken to a Stripe Express account signup page on Stripe’s website.
9. The new owner should enter their phone number and click Next.

10. After validating their phone number by entering a short verification code, the new owner will be able to log into the Stripe Express dashboard and manage the Stripe Express account in the same way that the original owner can.

Now that the new owner has access to the site’s Stripe Express dashboard, they should change all the relevant information to reflect the new ownership. For example, the new owner will want to update the contact details on file as well as change the connected bank account(s).

Essentially, have the new owner click into each section of the Stripe Express dashboard:

• Payout Details
• Linked External Accounts
• Platform Settings

… and update any outdated information that they find.

Next comes the only part of the process that requires a third party: transferring ownership of the Stripe Express account. (The previous sections only resulted in the new owner co-managing the account.) Transferring ownership can only be done by Stripe support.

To actually transfer ownership of the account, click this link to open Stripe’s support page, then click the Contact Stripe Express support link.

Stripe has advised us that you will need the following information in order to transfer ownership of an Express account:

• The phone number of the new owner of Express account.
• The email address of the new owner of Express account.
• A form of verification:
  • If a company representative is available, they will set up a call to confirm.
  • If a company representative is not available, they will need a verification letter.
  • If both the company representative and the old owner/administrator have left the company, they will need a verification letter from a company signatory which confirms and details the change of company representative and the transfer of ownership of the Stripe Express account. A company signatory is someone entitled to sign or execute business contracts on behalf of the organization, such as department directors, VPs, CTO, CFO, CEO, or board members.

Once Stripe has assisted you in changing the owner of the Stripe Express account, proceed to the next section.

Now that the new owner has all of the required accounts and information in place, it’s time to transfer ownership of the WordPress.com connection to them.

To transfer the connection, follow this process. It can differ based on whether you’re using our Jetpack plugin or not, but the result is the same: the new owner’s WordPress.com account should end up being the one to which the site is connected in our systems.

The last step of the process is to remove the old owner’s various accounts.

The new owner can delete the old owner’s administrator account on the site, under Users > All Users. WordPress.org has documentation on how this is done.

The new owner should also remove the old owner from Stripe Express. To do so:

1. Log into your Stripe Express account as detailed on this page.
2. Scroll down, and in the Team Members section, click the Edit link.

3. Click the X icon by the old owner’s account to remove it.

4. Click Remove in the confirmation side panel that appears.
5. Click the Done button.

After this is all done, the new owner should now control all the relevant accounts:

• The WordPress.com connection
• The site itself, via their admin account
• The Stripe Express account

Note that it may still be necessary to transfer ownership of some other accounts, e.g. the web hosting account, but those are out of the scope of this guide.