WordPress
Payment Gateways For a WooCommerce Store
The Payments tab lists the payment gateways available to your WooCommerce store, shows which are installed and which are switched on, and gives you one-click install and enable so you can go from a store with no checkout to a store taking card payments in a couple of minutes.
Where the Payments Tab Lives
Open Websites, click the store, open the WordPress menu in the site tab strip, and choose Payments. The page is titled Payment gateways.
The tab only appears on sites created as WooCommerce sites. If the site is a plain WordPress install, the menu item is not shown, and if you reach the page anyway you get an upgrade banner instead of the gateway list. Check the stack pill next to the site name at the top of the page to see how the site is classified.
The Gateways On Offer
| Gateway | What it handles |
|---|---|
| Stripe | Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay |
| PayPal | PayPal and cards |
| Afterpay | Buy now, pay later |
| POLi | New Zealand bank transfer |
| Windcave | New Zealand card processing and EFTPOS |
Gateways that matter particularly to New Zealand merchants carry an NZ pill in the list.
Apple Pay and Google Pay do not need their own gateway. They come with Stripe, and the panel says so on the Stripe row. Enabling Stripe is enough.
Reading the Status Pills
Each row shows one of three states:
- Connected, in green: the plugin is installed and active. It is participating in your checkout.
- Installed, in amber: the plugin is on the site but switched off. Customers do not see it.
- Available, in grey: the plugin is not installed yet.
Most gateways here are pre-installed but inactive when a WooCommerce store is provisioned, which is deliberate. An active gateway with no credentials behind it can break the checkout, so nothing is switched on until you choose to switch it on.
Enabling a Gateway
- Find the gateway in the list.
- Click Enable if it is already installed, or Install & enable if it is not.
- Wait for the status pill to turn green and read Connected.
- Click Configure.
Configure opens the gateway's own settings page inside your store's WordPress admin, in a new tab, already on the right screen. That is where your account credentials go: the API keys, merchant ID or account number the payment provider issued you.
A gateway is not taking money just because the pill says Connected. Connected means the plugin is active, not that it is configured. Until you have entered your own account credentials in WooCommerce and completed a real test order, treat the checkout as unfinished.
Gateways You Install Yourself
Not every gateway is distributed through the WordPress plugin directory. Windcave is the case here: its row shows a Get plugin button that takes you to the vendor's own download page instead of an install button.
For those, the sequence is:
- Click Get plugin and download the plugin from the vendor.
- In your store's WordPress admin, go to Plugins, then Add New, and upload the file.
- Activate it there.
- Come back to the Payments tab and click Configure to jump to its settings.
Once installed, it appears with a normal status pill like any other gateway.
Turning a Gateway Off
Click Disable on a Connected row. The plugin stays installed but stops being active, so it disappears from your checkout immediately and the pill drops back to Installed.
Disable rather than delete when you are pausing a payment method, for example while you sort out an account problem with the provider. The configuration stays in place, so re-enabling it later does not mean re-entering credentials.
Choosing What To Switch On
More gateways is not automatically better. Every option in the checkout is another decision for the customer to make, and every provider is another account to reconcile.
A common New Zealand setup is one card processor plus one alternative:
- Cards: Stripe or Windcave. Stripe is the faster path if you want Apple Pay and Google Pay with no extra work; Windcave is the one to look at if you already have an EFTPOS or merchant relationship set up through them.
- One alternative: PayPal for familiarity, Afterpay if your basket sizes suit instalments, or POLi if your customers prefer paying straight from a bank account.
Test each one you turn on with a real, small order before you announce it. Every provider has a test or sandbox mode; use it, then do one live transaction and refund it.
Troubleshooting
A warning says the plugin status could not be read. The panel asks WordPress directly which plugins are installed and active. If WordPress cannot answer, for example because the site is in maintenance mode or is erroring, the list is shown with a caution that the status may be incomplete. Fix the underlying site problem, then refresh: Error Logs and WordPress White Screen are the usual next stops.
The list is empty. The store did not report any recognised gateway plugins. Confirm WooCommerce itself is installed and active on the site.
An upgrade banner appears instead of the list. The site is not registered as a WooCommerce site. That is a property of the site, not something you can toggle here.
Enable succeeds but the gateway does not appear at checkout. Almost always missing credentials, or the gateway is enabled in KPanel but still switched off in its own WooCommerce settings screen. Open Configure and check both.
Card payments fail with a generic error. Check the gateway's own logs in WooCommerce, then the site's error log. Live keys pasted into test mode fields, and the reverse, is the single most common cause.
Where To Go Next
- WooCommerce on Kapsule for the wider store setup.
- Site Activity Log records every gateway change made from this page.
- Taking a Backup before you change anything on a live store.