How to Manage Recurring Payments with WooCommerce?
Nowadays, businesses count on recurring payments and subscriptions to regularly generate revenue. Those that use the membership or subscription model use recurring payments with WooCommerce. This helps them to run their business online easily and smoothly.
A business requires a system that processes or manages recurring payments with WooCommerce automatically. While there are other systems that must work with it simultaneously. They are adjustments, one-off payments, and refunds.
Introduction to Recurring Payments with WooCommerce
At a set period (time), the Recurring Payments allow the businesses to charge their customers. This is often annually or monthly. The benefit of these models is they provide a steady income flow for the company. This system makes it simpler and easier for clients to automatically pay their bills.
While a user makes purchases for software, books, or other items, they can make their payments over time. Have you ever thought, how are they done so precisely, quickly, and without any errors?
Many physical retailers are implementing recurring payment and readily subscription-based models.
There are ample payment gateway plugins that are readily available in the market. It gives the option to integrate WooCommerce subscription plugin. You must ensure to manage the payment gateways without any error/ confusion. This is more necessary if you are dealing with expensive items such as software packages, electronic equipment, etc.
Read about the best subscription plugin.
Here we will talk about how to manage recurring payments with WooCommerce:-
1. How to accept recurring payments with WooCommerce?
One of the great eCommerce platforms is WooCommerce. This plugin is cost-effective and can be easily used. It helps businesses to sell subscriptions, services, and products.
It is easy to install and activate the WooCommerce subscription plugin. But, you must ensure to buy a WooCommerce hosting account, SSL certificate, and domain name. Please note this is for those people who do not have a website.
Choose the right hosting platform. Even though this is a crucial step, you can effectively manage with a good WordPress Support team. You can select Cloudways, Bluehost, and Kinsta for the hosting platform.
Visit any of the platforms and choose the option “Start Your Store” for registration. You need to choose the plan in the next step to manage recurring payments with WooCommerce. It is recommended to pick a Starter packager if you are new. Introduce a domain name in the field given.
The hosting platform (you chose) will ask for your package details and account. You can even go for add-on packages to manage recurring payments with WooCommerce.
State all your information related to payments. Make sure to acknowledge their terms of service. In the final step, tap the button “Submit”.
You will get an email that covers all sets of instructions as soon as registration is complete. This will also have the details on how to employ the Control Panel. This will serve as the web hosting control panel of the company.
The moment you log into your account you will get a pop-up. On the cPanel, press “Log in to your site” to access the admin section of WordPress.
Your WooCommerce store is ready!!
2. How to configure recurring payments with WooCommerce?
Make sure to add one payment gateway. This must be done before you plan to configure recurring payments with WooCommerce.
You can go for the options like Stripe for the WooCommerce payment gateway.
Go for any payment option and tap “Get Started”.
WooCommerce will raise requests for your account key. On a new tap, log in to the dashboard of the payment gateway you went for in the last step. From there, accumulate the data (account key).
Click “API keys” on the dashboard of the payment gateway. You will see the API keys, copy them. On your WordPress dashboard, you can paste into an area that states “Live secret key”.
Choose the link “Test connection” to manage recurring payments with WooCommerce.
On your screen, you will see a notification that says “Connection successful”. It is an indication that WooCommerce and the payment gateway (you chose) are linked.
Press “Save live keys”. It will bring you to the setting screen of the payment gateway.
Make sure to check the box “Enable (the payment gateway you chose).
Apart from this, you must uncheck the option “Enable test mode”. This will exit the test mode on the connection of the payment gateway you chose. Now, you will start receiving the payments from your clients.
You can leave the test mode “On” for the sake of demonstration.
3. Final Stage: Demonstration
To make you understand the demonstration we are using software named “Anti-virus”.
Firstly, we will set the subscription for the software product. When a customer signs up for this specific product, it will take money on the basis of subscription.
If the plugin is active and installed, then visit “Dashboard”.
Click the option “WP Swings” and go for “Subscription for WooCommerce”.
Navigate “General Settings”. Do not forget to enable the “Subscription”.
Next, press “Allow Customers to Cancel Subscription”. When you are done with this step, press “Save Changes”.
Since you have enabled the plugin, choose the products which you want to add in the subscription model. Check the settings.
You can set the expiry for subscriptions. For instance, you can set it for 30 days, 60 days, or more.