A little while back we shared the news that WooCommerce shipped a beta payments feature as part of its 4.0 release. It’s a free plugin with no monthly costs or setup fees. You only pay when you make a sale.
We’re actually using this right here at CSS-Tricks. In fact, Chris blogged it back in July. Back then, we were using the WooCommerce Payments beta so we could start selling memberships here on the site and do it while taking payments without anyone having to leave the site to complete the transaction with a third-party.
The big news now is that WooCommerce Payments now supports WooCommerce Subscriptions. This is game-changer. It means you can offer a recurring payment option on subscription-based products and have all of those payments integrated with WooCommerce Payments reporting and features.
Enter subscriptions
The thing that makes WooCommerce Subscriptions such a great extension is that it turns any WooCommerce product into a possible subscription. So, yes, even a t-shirt can generate recurring payments (a shirt is not a good example of a subscription product, but the point is that subscriptions can be tied to anything). Anything you want to renew after a period of time is fair game. That could be a publication subscription that renews annually, a record of the month club with a monthly subscription, or even a payment plan that allows customers to pay for large purchases in monthly installments.
Now that WooCommerce Payments supports WooCommerce Subscriptions, not only are recurring payments a thing, but it brings all of those transactions to your store’s dashboard, making it a cinch to track those payments, as well as your cash flow. Payment disputes can even be handled without ever having to leave WordPress.
Oh, and saved credit cards!
In addition to subscriptions, WooCommerce Payments also supports saved credit cards. So now, when someone purchases anything on your site — whether it’s a single product or a recurring subscription — they can choose to save their payment information with you for faster transactions on future purchases!
All the things, all on WordPress
WooCommerce has been great for a long time, but it’s these sorts of enhancements that make it not just a killer experience but makes powerful e-commerce capabilities open to big and small stores alike. Get started with WooCommerce and WooCommerce Payments — it’s totally free to pick up and try out.
What’s the advantage of this compared to other gateways like stripe?
Hey there! WooCommerce Payments is actually powered by Stripe, so you’re getting native Stripe support right out of the box in addition to integrated features, like reporting, managing transactions and disputes, and saved cards without leaving WordPress. One reason I personally like this is that Stripe is designed to be a developer solution rather than a merchant-facing one, so having all of the transaction management in WordPress rather than Strip makes a lot of sense.
Hey Geoff, so if my site gets hacked, they get all the customers’ info? Isn’t it better to let Stripe handle the data on their well-secured server? Bob
Hey Bob! Payments and data are still handled by Stripe; it’s just now possible to manage those things better in WP without having to be logged into both places.