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WooPayments: Startup Guide

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Thanks for choosing WooPayments! 

We provide an integrated payments solution to get your WooCommerce store up and running quickly, without setup costs or monthly fees. With WooPayments, you’ll get:

  • Credit and debit card acceptance.
  • Local payment methods.
  • Automated deposits to your bank account.
  • Built-in multi-currency support.
  • Easy integration of popular digital wallets.

Managing payments – including refunds, disputes, and deposits – all happens from within your dashboard, integrated into your site’s WordPress admin screen.

Requirements

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First, let’s make sure you have what’s required to ensure a smooth installation:

Check for WooPayments

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Go to Plugins > Installed Plugins to see if WooPayments is already installed. If it is, great! Scroll down to the Signing Up section and continue from there.

If it’s not listed, please follow the instructions in the section below.

Installation

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To install WooPayments:

  1. Go to Plugins > Add New on your WordPress site.
  2. In the search box, type “WooPayments” and hit Enter on your keyboard.
  3. One of the first results will be WooPayments by Automattic.
  1. Click the Install Now button to begin installation on your site. Once installation is complete, the Install Now button will change to Activate.
  • Installing WooPayments
  • Activating WooPayments
  1. Click the Activate button.

After clicking Activate, you will be taken to the setup page to start creating your account.

Signing up

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After you’ve installed and activated WooPayments, it’s time to start the sign-up process. Before doing so, keep the following information in mind:

  • Since WooPayments is built in partnership with Stripe, you will be taken to their site (connect.stripe.com) to complete the sign-up process.
  • If you just want to try out WooPayments first, without needing to enter your real personal or business information, please see our document on using Dev Mode.
  • If you’re an agency or developer setting up WooPayments for a client, it’s best to have them complete the account creation process for themselves.

During signup, we’ll ask you to connect to your WordPress.com account and enter some information about you and your business. Lastly, you’ll add a bank account (or, optionally, if you’re located in the United States, a debit card) in order to receive deposits.

To sign up for WooPayments: 

  1. Go to Payments and click the Finish setup button.
  1. Enter your email address to connect to your WordPress.com account.
    • Your WordPress.com account email will be used for most WooPayments notifications. If you don’t want such emails going to that address, it might be best to create a new WordPress.com account solely for connecting your WooPayments site.
  1. Verify your business details with our payments partner, Stripe.

NOTE: As of WooPayments version 6.0.0 or later, some merchants will go through an experimental signup process called gradual signup. This involves verifying some information on your site first, before being taken to Stripe’s signup form. Please see the link above for more information on this experiment.

If you are in the United States, you will have the option to add a debit card instead of bank account. However, adding a bank account is preferred for two reasons:

  • Debit cards have a maximum amount of money ($9,999 USD) that can be deposited at once, whereas bank accounts do not have any such limit.
  • Debit cards cannot be debited if your account balance goes negative, which could prevent you from issuing timely refunds to customers.

This short video shows how you can use WooPayments after you’ve signed up.

Staying updated

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Running the latest versions of both WooCommerce and WooPayments is a crucial part of keeping your site secure. We suggest enabling automatic updates for both plugins on the Plugins > Installed Plugins page.

You can learn more about auto-updating plugins on this WordPress.org page.

Configuring

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Once you’ve finished signing up, go to the Payments > Settings section of your WordPress dashboard. This is where you can configure WooPayments. 

First, make sure WooPayments is enabled by checking the Enable WooPayments box. If you want to test WooPayments before taking any real payments, you can do that by also checking the Enable test mode box.

Test mode

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Test mode lets you simulate transactions using test card numbers so that you can ensure your checkout process is working as expected. Simply put any product in the cart and go through the checkout process and the order confirmation page to see exactly what customers would see during an actual purchase.

NOTE: To run a test transaction, you must have already created at least one product in WooCommerce. Also, test mode only works with test credit card numbers. Using real credit card information in test mode will cause the order to fail.

When you’re ready to go live, remember to disable test mode to begin accepting live payments. 

Payments accepted on checkout

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In the Payments accepted on checkout section, you’ll see that by default you are already able to take credit and debit card payments:

By checking the boxes for other payment methods, you can also offer local payment options and buy now, pay later options to certain customers. Offering these payment methods can increase the chance that visitors to your site will purchase from your store.

Express checkouts

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This section shows features which enable even faster checkouts. Enabling these can boost your sales and reduce abandoned carts, as they make it easier for customers to buy. WooPayments currently supports WooPay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Link by Stripe.

Transactions and Deposits

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The Transactions section controls how your checkout works. Here you can configure whether to allow customers to save their card information on your site and how a charge from your site will appear on customer bank statements. You can also add some contact information, which will appear on receipts and emails from your site.

The Deposits section lets you to control how often WooPayments deposits your earnings into your bank account.

Fraud protection

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Our Fraud protection feature offers rules with which you can block suspicious orders before they get placed. This can help you avoid carding attacks and increased disputes.

We suggest most stores use the Basic risk level, but to learn more about this feature, please consult our dedicated page on the fraud protection rules.

Going further

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Now that you’re up and running with WooPayments, you can learn more about managing your money and the various settings available to you. After that, feel free to explore some of the more advanced functionality our plugin has to offer!

Getting help

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Here are a few simple things you can do to ensure you have the best experience with WooPayments:

If you need help, don’t worry! WooPayments is supported by our worldwide team of Happiness Engineers. Please contact us via the Support tab in your account dashboard, where we can assist over live chat (when available) or email.