WooCommerce: Should I Use PayPal or Stripe @ Checkout?

Yet another million dollar WooCommerce question… not! In fact, the answer is pretty damn easy: you should enable both payment gateways on your WooCommerce checkout (sorry about the spoiler). And here’s the proof.

Go to a local shop…

Fill up your shopping cart with lots of great products. You’re so excited you didn’t even check the price tags.

You get to the checkout, the employee scans all your products, you’re given the final bill and then says “We only accept coins, is that ok?

Uhm, that looks like a pretty obvious checkout abandonment to me.

Now go to your WooCommerce store…

Case study 1. Add lots of products to cart, go to checkout, then after all this effort you notice the ONLY payment method is PayPal.

But I don’t have a PayPal account“. Cart abandonment it is. (YES, they can pay with a credit card even if they don’t have a PayPal account, but go tell the user…).

Case study 2. Add lots of products to cart, go to checkout, then notice that the ONLY payment method is Stripe.

But I don’t want to give you my credit card details“. Cart abandonment it is. (YES, if your website won’t save their credit card details because they’re safely stored with Stripe, but go tell the user…).

Conclusion

You should offer as many payment options as possible. When you go to the shop you can pay with cash, credit card, phone credit, debit card, PayPal and other methods.

And so should your WooCommerce website. Enable PayPal to allow those who trust in PayPal to pay securely, and enable Stripe to allow those who can’t stand PayPal to pay on your website directly.

Easy!

Related content

  • WooCommerce: Cart and Checkout on the Same Page
    This is your ultimate guide – complete with shortcodes, snippets and workarounds – to completely skip the Cart page and have both cart table and checkout form on the same (Checkout) page. But first… why’d you want to do this? Well, if you sell high ticket products (i.e. on average, you sell no more than […]
  • WooCommerce: Disable Payment Method If Product Category @ Cart
    Today we take a look at the WooCommerce Checkout and specifically at how to disable a payment gateway (e.g. PayPal) if a specific product category is in the Cart. There are two tasks to code in this case: (1) based on all the products in the Cart, calculate the list of product categories in the […]
  • WooCommerce: Add Privacy Policy Checkbox @ Checkout
    Here’s a snippet regarding the checkout page. If you’ve been affected by GDPR, you will know you now need users to give you Privacy Policy consent. Or, you might need customer to acknowledge special shipping requirements for example. So, how do we display an additional tick box on the Checkout page (together with the existing […]
  • WooCommerce: Redirect to Custom Thank you Page
    How can you redirect customers to a beautifully looking, custom, thank you page? Thankfully you can add some PHP code to your functions.php or install a simple plugin and define a redirect to a custom WordPress page (as opposed to the default order-received endpoint). This is a great way for you to add specific up-sells, […]
  • WooCommerce: Disable Payment Gateway by Country
    You might want to disable PayPal for non-local customers or enable a specific gateway for only one country… Either way, this is a very common requirement for all of those who trade internationally. Here’s a simple snippet you can further customize to achieve your objective. Simply pick the payment gateway “slug” you want to disable/enable […]

Rodolfo Melogli

Business Bloomer Founder

Author, WooCommerce expert and WordCamp speaker, Rodolfo has worked as an independent WooCommerce freelancer since 2011. His goal is to help entrepreneurs and developers overcome their WooCommerce nightmares. Rodolfo loves travelling, chasing tennis & soccer balls and, of course, wood fired oven pizza. Follow @rmelogli

6 thoughts on “WooCommerce: Should I Use PayPal or Stripe @ Checkout?

  1. The link in your reply no longer works and redirects to home page. I also have a WooCommerce installation where the Paypal gateway isn’t working with the WooCommerce Payments gateway which is a white label of STRIPE.
    https://businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-troubleshooting-mistakes-to-avoid/

  2. I agree with you but still have a problem. Can’t have both on my woocommerce website. When i enable one, the other disapear from my template.

    So i kept Stripe but i really want both. And with theme its hard to add something somerwher without knowning php

    1. Robert, sounds like you have a plugin or theme conflict. Take a look at this tutorial to see how to troubleshoot: https://businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-troubleshooting-mistakes-to-avoid/

  3. Makes total sense. Thanks!

    1. Thanks a mill Fitz 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *