It’s now easier and more affordable than ever to set up an ecommerce website and start taking payments online.
You can create a website and reach millions of customers, who can then make a purchase at the click of a button.
But what exactly do you need to take payments online? How do you set up online payment systems? And what are the online credit card processing fees?
There’s a dizzying variety of ways you could accept online payments, due to the countless combinations of platforms and processors you could use. To make things easier, we’ve decided to focus on what we think are the easiest and most affordable options for small businesses.
How to take payments on a website: payment processors
In order to take payments on a website, you need to either be registered with a payment gateway and a merchant account, or to be registered with an all-in-one online payment processing solution like PayPal, Stripe, or Square.
As a small business, for ease, we’d recommend using an online payment gateway. This avoids you having to go through the application and approval processes, and negotiating fees, with separate payment gateway and merchant account providers.
To sign up with a payment processor, just visit their website, create an account, provide some basic info about your business, and (pending approval) you’re ready to go. Unlike the payment gateway and merchant account option, you generally won’t be tied into a long-term contract with a or be charged monthly fees.
Take payments online using a website builder
Taking payments on Squarespace, Wix, Shopify or any other website builder couldn’t be easier. Website builders generally have payment processing and checkout functionality built in, and integrate with numerous payment gateways. All you have to do is:
Step 1 – sign up for an ecommerce plan with your website builder of choice
Step 2 – create your online store using a template with product listings and a checkout page
Step 3 – enter ‘settings’ and connect a compatible payment processor (e.g. Stripe, PayPal, Square)
Step 4 – start taking payments
Alternatively, Shopify has its own fully integrated payment gateway, Shopify Payments, which eliminates transaction fees from third-party providers.
Commerce plans for the likes of Wix (£13-£22 per month) and Squarespace (£12-£79 per month) are much cheaper than Shopify (£19-£1,800 per month), though the latter does distinguish itself with more advanced sales features.
Taking payments on a WordPress website
The easiest way to take payments online if you set up your website using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress is to use one of WP’s own e-commerce plugins, such as WooCommerce.
Like Shopify, the WooCommerce payment gateway’s fully integrated into the CMS, and allows you to accept payments in more than 135 currencies. You can download and install WooCommerce Payments for free and at no monthly cost.
Using a CMS to take payments
Using a CMS like Adobe Commerce or OpenCart is another popular way to build an ecommerce site.
These open source platforms are excellent if you want the freedom to create a bespoke online store, but they do require serious time, energy and coding skills, and you (or a developer) will have to manually create the checkout and payments functionality.
Online credit card processing fees
Fees vary between payment processors and website builders, so it’s worth shopping around for the most competitive rates. To help you understand how your fees might break down, we’ll look at a variety of examples.
GoCardless
GoCardless provides a cost-effective way to accept one-off or recurring payments online, via direct debit. Automating the payment collection process avoids the high fees, complexity and failure rates of cards, and gives you more control than a standing order.
GoCardless currently supports collections from more than 30 countries at the real market exchange rate. Nifty features like automated payment retries recover most failed payments, while advanced fraud protection monitors transactions to protect you and your customers.
GoCardless fees:
Domestic UK – 1% + 20p (capped at £4)
International – 2% + 20p
Transaction amount over £2,000 – +0.3%
Airwallex
If you have global ambitions for your ecommerce business, look no further than Airwallex, an online payments solution designed for businesses that trade internationally.
With Airwallex, you can accept payments in more than 180 countries, and boost transaction success rates by allowing consumers to see prices and pay in their local currency. This automatic currency conversion is applied at checkout depending on the customer’s location. And with like-for-like settlement, you can reduce hidden FX conversion fees by collecting and settling in the same currency.
Airwallex fees:
UK Cards – 1.30% + 0.20 GBP
EEA Cards – 2.40% + 0.20 GBP
International Cards – 3.15% + 0.20 GBP
American Express Cards – 2.40% + 0.20 GBP
Local Payment Methods (such as WeChat Pay, GrabPay and 160+ other methods) – 0.20 GBP + Payment Method Fee
Squarespace and third party payment processor
As a Squarespace user, you can either use the platform’s native payments solution or connect to a third-party processor like Stripe or PayPal (for an additional fee). Squarespace doesn’t charge transaction fees for the sale of physical, download, or service products on most of its premium plans, but Basic plan customers pay 2%, and Business plan users pay 3%.
However, you are still charged payment processing fees, which are currently:
Domestic personal debit or credit cards – 2% + £0.25
Domestic business/corporate debit or credit cards – 3% + £0.25
International personal debit or credit cards – 3% + £0.25
International business/corporate debit or credit cards – 4% + £0.25
Shopify Payments
Shopify is a full-featured ecommerce platform designed to help small businesses get the most out of selling online. It allows you to accept local and global payment methods, and to promote and sell across multiple channels, including Instagram, TikTok and Google. You can also accept crypto, Klarna and other alternative payment types.
You can use third-party payment providers with Shopify for an additional fee. However, if you use Shopify Payments, you avoid those fees and pay a single processing fee per transaction, which varies by plan. Prices start from £5 per month to sell through social media and messaging apps.
Shopify online card rates by plan:
Basic – 2% + 25p
Grow – 1.7% + 25pa
Advanced – 1.5% + 25p
Plus – Custom
WooCommerce Payments
WooCommerce is a flexible ecommerce plugin for WordPress that lets you sell products and take payments directly on your website. With WooPayments, you can accept major debit and credit cards, manage transactions from the WordPress dashboard, and support customers in multiple currencies.WooPayments is available in 38 countries and supports 135+ currencies
As a UK-based business, you pay the following fees for accepting card payments through WooCommerce payments:
European debit or credit card – 1.4% + 20p
Non-European cards – 2.9% + 20p (+2% if the customer’s currency is different to the deposit currency).
Next steps
So there you have it: taking payments online can be as easy as registering with an online payment processor and creating an online store using a website builder template. Don’t be bewildered by choice. Just take some time to research how each online payment setup would work for your business and choose the most appropriate option.
See also: Five tips to get started taking card payments
