How to Set Up WooCommerce Payments – Everything You Need To Know

In the previous tutorial, I showed you how to set up WooCommerce, create a product, and enable PayPal payments. However, to start actually receiving revenue from your online store, you need to enable one of several payment methods.

Here’s a screenshot of the kinds of payment methods available on WooCommerce by default:

By far, the most flexible of these payment options is the first one, WooCommerce Payments. Using WooCommerce Payments, you can accept the following:

1. Debit/Credit Cards
2. Google Pay
3. Apple Pay

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up WooCommerce payments.

Step #1. Start the WooCommerce Configuration

Once you’ve set up WooCommerce, go to “Settings” on the left-hand side of the WordPress dashboard under the WooCommerce tab:

This will bring you to a page with several tabs. Select the one called “Payments”. If this is your first time entering this page, then WooCommerce Payments will already be selected by default, and ready for configuration:

If you don’t want to set up WooCommerce Payments, click “All payment methods” on the right side to access the others. For now, we’re going to go ahead and configure WooCommerce Payments.

Click the “Get started” button as shown in the screenshot above.

Step #2. Set Up Stripe

WooCommerce partners with Stripe – a financial services and SaaS company, through which all the magic happens. Stripe gets all your details, sets up the backend, and creates the infrastructure for advanced functionality like saving credit card information, and keeping it secure – all functions that the typical WordPress installation is very poorly equipped to carry out.

So when you start the configuration process, Stripe asks you for your details, including your address as well as your tax information like the last four digits of your social security number (if you live in the US) for verification.

Note: Once you create a Stripe accounting using a certain country, you can no longer change that country to something else. If you want to operate in another country at a later date, you need to create a new Stripe account from scratch. So make sure you’ve gotten the country correct – you only get one shot at this!

Here’s Stripe asking you for your payment details:

Fill up the form, and click continue. Stripe will then present you with a series of forms asking you for more details about your business such as which industry you operate in, and what kinds of products you want to sell.

Step #3. Setting Up Your Bank Account Details

To receive payments, Stripe needs to know where to deposit your funds. For this, you must set up a bank account on the next screen. Here’s what it looks like:

You can choose the easy way by searching for your bank details and using the secure login page to connect to it. Personally, however, I’ve always been rather uneasy about using a 3rd party website to connect with my bank, so I choose to enter the details manually.

You need the routing number and your bank account – both of which you can find in your checkbook. Once you enter your bank details and everything checks out, you should be able to confirm your bank information on the next screen:

If everything looks good, click “Continue”.

Step #4. Confirm Your Stripe Account Email

Once you’re done with all of the above, Stripe will send you an e-mail to the address you registered on the first screen:

You’re almost done!

Step #5. Enable WooCommerce Payments

Now that you’ve finished configuring Stripe, go back to the WooCommerce payments tab in the settings. Like before, the “WooCommerce Payments” link should be highlighted. Now you can enable the checkbox labeled “Enable WooCommerce Payments” as shown here:

That’s it!

Step #6. Verify that Card Payments are Working

If you’ve already created a product as shown in my previous WooCommerce tutorial, you can head over to it, add it to your cart, and proceed to checkout. If everything’s working as it should, you should now see the option to enter the credit/debit card information as shown here:

And that’s how you know it’s working… If you go a few days and don’t have a successful sale and you would expect to, then I would recommend submitting a test transaction with your own credit card and refunding yourself later just to make sure everything is processing properly.

Using Enabling Apple Pay and Google Pay

With WooCommerce Payments, you can also enable express checkouts. This allows your customers to make online payments using Apple or Google Pay. The benefit of offering these checkout services on your WooCommerce website is that it reduces the friction of making purchases. Customers that use express checkout already have their card details and other information stored on their phones or in their wallets. But by providing them with Apple and Google Pay, they can just click the button and make a payment seamlessly.

To enable both of these in WooCommerce Payments, click the Payments tab in the WooCommerce settings as before, and make sure that the WooCommerce Payments settings page is open. Now scroll down till you see the option to enable these payments as shown here:

Ideally, everything should work as expected. But what if it doesn’t?

Problems with Enabling Apple and Google Pay

Sometimes when you enable the express checkout methods, you’ll see a message like this:

Express checkouts: Apple Pay domain verification failed

Here’s a screenshot:

Fix #1: Enable and Disable Express Checkout

Before you try anything else, just disable the express checkout option in WooCommerce payments, and save your changes. Then reload the page, enable the button, and keep your changes again. With a little bit of luck, this might have resolved the problem. It’s the equivalent of rebooting your computer and crossing your fingers.

There’s no guarantee that this will work, but it’s worth trying before moving on to the next step!

Fix #2: Ensure that your “/.well-known” Folder is Accessible at the ROOT Domain

When you enable Apple Pay on WooCommerce Payments, the plugin inserts a file called “apple-developer-merchantid-domain-association” in the “.well-known” folder located at the installation root of your WordPress application. In other words, this URL:

https://www.example.com/.well-known/apple-developer-merchantid-domain-association

This normally works great, except under special circumstances.

It won’t work if you’ve installed WordPress in a subfolder!

When Apple checks your site to see if it’s valid, it checks the root of the domain, not the subfolder in which you installed WordPress. So if your WordPress install is in a subfolder, Apple won’t be able to verify your domain and you won’t be able to use Apple Pay.

To fix this, ensure that a “.well-known” folder is available and accessible on your root domain – not just the subfolder in which you’ve installed WordPress. And then, copy the apple-developer-merchantid-domain-association file currently in your subfolder and paste it into the “.well-known” folder in the root domain.

Once you’ve done that, disable both Apple and Google Pay, save your changes, and re-enable them both again. Now the Apple Pay error message about failed domain verification will vanish, and you’ll see the buttons on your checkout screen.

Here’s what it looks like for the Google Pay button to appear:

To see the button for Apple Pay, you’ll need to access your site on an Apple device since that’s the only place it works. For Google Pay, you’ll need to access the checkout screen from a Chrome device – it won’t work on Firefox, for example.

And that’s all there is! Enabling payments using the WooCommerce Payments system is a bit involved, as it requires a decent amount of set-up. But once they’ve collected all the information, you can get started almost immediately.