If you own a WooCommerce store and only have one mode of accepting payments, you might want to consider adding other payment options. Adding more payment gateways should be easy. WooCommerce can integrate easily with many payment gateway providers. In most cases, you’ll just need to configure a plugin and a few settings. But why have more than one payment gatewat for WooCommerce if the one you have is working fine?
Why Have More than One Payment Gateway?
There are several benefits to having more than one payment gateway.
Reduce Checkout Abandonment
One important reason why you should have more than one payment gateway is to reduce checkout abandonment. Not to be confused with cart abandonment, checkout abandonment is when a user reaches checkout and does not complete the checkout process.
There are various reasons your customers can abandon checkout. Common reasons include having too many form fields, hidden fees, and not having the user’s preferred payment option. For example, some users may prefer to pay using Paypal since it comes with buyer protection or they may believe it is more secure. But if you only have credit card payments, then users who want to use Paypal might abandon your checkout.
Backup Payment Gateway
If you only have one payment gateway and you encounter issues with your payment gateway, your customer will have no other options for completing checkout. That means you are out of business until you sort out your payment gateway issue. It’s great if these issues can be fixed in a matter of minutes, but sometimes these issues can go for days. The longer that it takes for you to fix the issue, the more business you lose.
In short, using only one payment gateway is risky. Having two or more modes of payment allows your customers to check out using another payment gateway if their first choice is not available or having problems.
Flexibility
Many payment gateways are not capable of handling different payment methods. If you want to cover all bases, then you should use more than one payment gateway. In addition, some payment gateways might not be able to process foreign currency. This can be a problem if your business caters to a global market.
Customer Preference
Having more choices is better when it comes to payment options. Trust is hard to come by and if you are using a payment gateway that your customers trust, they will hand you their money. The more payment options you offer, it is more likely that you’ll have your customers’ preferred payment option.
Some users may not be comfortable with entering their credit card information on every ecommerce site that they use. These users are more comfortable using services such as Paypal, Apple Pay or Amazon Pay. Still, some people might not have an account for these services and would prefer entering their credit card information. It’s all a matter of preference. Giving your customers the ability to pay with their preferred payment gateway scores you a point.
What are the Common Payment Options?
There are a lot of payment gateway choices to use for WooCommerce. These include Paypal, which can be Paypal Standard, Paypal Express, Paypal Advanced or Paypal Pro. Using Paypal is already akin to having two payment gateways since users can pay via Paypal or through their credits cards without need for a Paypal account. You can check out the Paypal Extension Comparison page to determine which Paypal option is right for your WooCommerce store.
Other popular payment gateway options include Stripe, Authorize.net, Amazon Pay and Apple Pay which is available through Stripe.
Which Payment Option is Right for Me?
How do you know which payment option is right for you? There are several factors to consider such as cost, location and security. Depending on where you do business, you might also want to consider location-specific regulations such as GDPR. There is no single right answer as to which payment gateway is the best, it all depends on your business’ particular needs.
Get to adding that extra payment gateway as soon as possible. If you ever need help setting up your payment gateways for WooCommerce, you can contact the Wooassist team and we’ll help you out. If you have any suggestions or comments, you can post them in the comments section below.
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