4-Step Easy Process: How To Accept Credit Card Payments Online

Setting up and accepting credit card payments on your website is a lot easier than what you think. Gone are the days of having to use your local bank to sign up for a merchant account.

The costs involved with set up, monthly fees, and transaction fees for a merchant account with major banks, can really add up.

Enter Stripe, the easiest way to accept credit card payments online for small businesses.

In under 10 mins you can sign up with Stripe, enter your banking details where you want to be paid, and start to accept credit card payments on your website.

No monthly fees, No set up costs !

They do however take a 3% transaction fee (which is normal for any merchant account) and it can take up to 7 days until your money is paid out (the payout delay will reduce after a period of time – country dependent). A small setback, but worth it in the long run.

How to accept credit card payments online – Step by Step

For this tutorial, I will set up the easiest way to accept credit card payments online using WooCommerce. Stripe only allows sign ups from certain countries. To check if your country is supported, go to Stripe – Supported Countries.

Sign up to Stripe

• Go to www.stripe.com and select Create Stripe Account, or Start Now button

• Once you’ve created an account, you’ll be taken to the Dashboard. Here, you will “Add a Name“. This will be your business name, or whatever you want to call this account.

• Next, Activate your Account.

• Enter all your business details. When it comes to “Credit card statement details“, enter a short description that you want to show on customer’s credit card statements.

• When all your details are entered, you are now ready to use Stripe.

Set up WooCommerce

• Go to Plugins > New > Search for Stripe for WooCommerce
• Install Now, then Activate

• Once activated, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments > Stripe > Setup

• Go back to your Stripe Dashboard. You need to copy both the Publishable API Key and Secret Key you will see on your Dashboard into the WooCommerce plugin.

• If you can’t see your API keys on the Stripe Dashboard, go to Developers > API keys.

• Now go back to the WooCommerce Stripe setup where you will

1. Enable Stripe,
2. Enable Test Mode, and
3. Copy and paste API keys from your Stripe account.

• Copy the Webhook Endpoint address and enter it back into Stripe. It will be something like www.your-website.com/?wc-api=wc_stripe

• Back in Stripe, go to Developers > Webhooks
• Add endpoint
• Paste the Webhook address from WooCommerce into Endpoint URL
• Choose receive all events
• Add endpoint to finish

Congratulations ! Your Stripe account is now setup with WooCommerce.

Test your Stripe account in Test Mode

Before going live taking credit card transactions, you need to test a transaction to make sure everything is working.

1. Go to your Stripe Dashboard and make sure that Viewing Test Data on the left menu is activated. This is important.
2. Now go back to your WooCommerce website, add products to your cart, and start the checkout process.
3. When you get to the payment section you should see the “test” version of the credit card section.
4. Enter credit card number 4242 4242 4242 4242. This is Stripe’s test credit card number. Enter a future expiry date, and any 3-number CVC.
5. Submit your order, then go back to your Stripe Dashboard. You should see your payment come up for Today’s sales.

Accept credit card payments

Once the test sale is working you need to Deactivate Viewing Test Data. You site is now live, ready to accept credit card payments.