How to Easily Accept Credit Card Payments on Your WordPress Site

Do you want to learn how to accept credit card payments on your WordPress site?

By default, WordPress does not come with credit card payment options, but there are plenty of plugins and tools that can help solve that.

In this article, we will show you how to easily accept credit card payments on your WordPress site.

Why Accept Credit Card Payments in WordPress?

Credit and cards are the most common form of online payment in the world.

If you’re selling products or services on your WordPress website, then it is important to allow your visitors to pay for them using a credit card.

Accepting credit card payments will improve your conversion rate and reduce cart abandonment.

That being said, let’s look at how you can accept card payments on your website.

Note: You will need to enable HTTPS/SSL on your website so that you can securely accept credit card payments. For more details, you can follow our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress site.

Video Tutorial

If you’d prefer written instructions, just keep reading.

Accepting Credit Card Payments in WordPress without Shopping Cart

Often users don’t want to set up a full-fledged online store with a shopping cart to accept credit card payments. This makes a lot of sense, especially if you’re only selling a single product or accepting payments for consulting or services.

In this case, all you need is a simple online order form with a credit card payment option.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

WPForms is the most beginner-friendly WordPress form builder plugin. It is the simplest way to accept credit card payments in WordPress. You can also use it to create just about any type of form in WordPress.

While they have a Lite version that’s free, you will need their Pro plan to access the payment add-ons and order form template.

Upon activation, you need to visit the WPForms » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information in your WPForms account area.

Next, we’ll connect WPForms with Stripe. Stripe is a credit-card processing platform that makes it easy for businesses to accept credit card payments on their website. It’s free to sign up, but like all payment processers they do charge a small fee per transaction.

If you don’t already have an account, then you’ll need to sign up for Stripe on their website.

Then you need to head over to WPForms » Addons and locate the Stripe addon. Go ahead and click on the ‘Install Addon’ button and then click on the ‘Activate’ button.

Once the Stripe addon is activated, you need to connect WPForms to your Stripe account.

To do that, head over to WPForms » Settings page and click on the ‘Payments’ tab. After that, you will need to connect your Stripe account by clicking the ‘Connect with Stripe’ button.

On the next screen, you can enter your Stripe email address and click the ‘Next’ button.

Once that is done, Stripe will now ask for your password to log in to your account.

After logging in, you can select your Stripe account and then click the ‘Connect’ button.

Next, you will be redirected back to the WPForms Payments settings tab. To make sure that your account is successfully connected, you can go to the Connection Status settings under Stripe settings.

When you see a green tick mark, it means your Stripe account is now live with WPForms. Go ahead and click the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.

WPForms is now ready to accept credit card payments.

Now let’s create an online billing or order form to add to your website for accepting credit card payments.

To start, head over to WPForms » Add New page. From here, you need to provide a title for your form and then select the ‘Billing / Order Form’ template.

WPForms will pre-load the form builder with a simple order form with commonly used fields.

You can add new fields from the left column using the drag and drop form builder.

After you’ve added the fields you want to your order form, you need to scroll down to the Payment Fields section in the left column. From here, you can add payment-related form fields.

WPForms allows you to add multiple items as well as single items that users can order. You can click on the item field to change item details and pricing.

After editing the item details, go ahead and add the Stripe Credit Card field to your form.

You can also point and click to edit any form field.

For example, the plugin lets you change the field’s label, edit its format, or make a field mandatory to fill by clicking the Required checkbox.

Now that your form is set up, let’s enable payments for this form. To do that, you need to click on the ‘Payments’ tab on the left and then select Stripe.

After that, just click the checkbox next to the ‘Enable Stripe payments’ option and provide a description of the payment. The description is what will appear on the user’s credit card statement.

Optionally, you can send an email receipt to your users by selecting the email field from the drop-down menu.

WPForms also allows you to set up smart conditional logic for your form. You can choose to show or hide the payment form field based on the options your user selects.

There’s also an option to enable recurring subscription payments and select the recurring time period.

Next, you will need to enable AJAX form submissions to use the Stripe Credit Card field. AJAX form submissions allow customers to submit forms without reloading the entire page.

To do that, simply go to the Settings tab on the left and then under the General settings, click the checkbox for ‘Enable AJAX form submission.’

Now, you may want to receive an email notification for new orders and purchases. You can also send a confirmation email to notify the user that you have received their order.

Let’s set up notifications for your billing form.

You need to start by clicking the Settings tab on the left and then select ‘Notifications.’

You will notice that WPForms has already created a notification that sends an email to your WordPress admin email address when a new order is placed.

You can edit this notification message. For example, you can provide additional email addresses, change email copy, subject, and more.

If you want to send a separate notification to your users, then click on the ‘Add New Notification’ button.

You will be asked to provide a name for the new notification. Let’s call it ‘Customer Notification.’ After that, you will see the notification fields that you can edit.

You need to click on the ‘Show Smart Tags’ link next to the Send to email address option and select the ‘Email’ field. This allows WPForms to use the email address that your customer provided when submitting the form.

You can edit the rest of the notification email by providing a subject line and message. You can also use smart tags to use the form fields submitted by the user to add item details, user’s name, and other personalized information.

After that, you can head over to the ‘Confirmations’ tab. Here, WPForms will use Message as the default option. What this does is show a thank you message when a customer submits a form.

Instead of showing a message, you can also show a specific page or redirect customers to another URL. Simply select the Confirmation Type from the dropdown menu.

Once you are done, you can click on the Save button at the top and exit the form builder.

Your online credit card payment form is now ready, and you can add it to any WordPress page on your site.

To add your form, simply edit a post or page or create a new one. Then, click on the plus (+) sign at the top and add a WPForms block in your WordPress editor.

After that, select your order form from the dropdown menu in the WPForms block.

You can now save or publish your page and click on the preview button to see your form in action.

Note: Don’t forget to test your form to make sure everything is working fine. If you are unable to send or receive email notifications, then follow the instructions in our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

If you don’t want to use Stripe, then you can also use PayPal to accept credit card payments using the WPForms PayPal addon.

However, a simple payment form isn’t a perfect solution for everyone.

Based on the use case, you may need a different solution for accepting credit card payments on your website. Let’s look at other ways to accept credit card payments in WordPress.

Accepting Credit Card Payments in an Online Store

If you want to add a shopping cart and sell multiple items, then you will need an eCommerce plugin like WooCommerce.

It is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin on the market. WooCommerce makes it easy to sell things online and accept credit card payments.

For complete step by step instructions, see our step-by-step guide on WooCommerce made simple.

Accept Credit Card Payments on a Membership Website

If you want to build a membership website to sell membership subscriptions, online courses, and paid content, then we recommend using MemberPress.

It is the most powerful WordPress membership plugin that easily integrates with Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.net to accept credit card payments on your website.

Here is a complete guide on how to create a membership website with step by step instructions. If you’d like to sell courses, then we also have a guide on how to create an online course in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to accept and process credit card payments in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the must have WordPress plugins for business websites, or check out our guide on how to create a free business email address.

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