How to accept WooCommerce cryptocurrency payment in your store?

These days, cryptocurrencies have been becoming more and more popular in the world. It is worth idea if you could add a cryptocurrency gateway in your store. But how to include a woocommerce crypto payments method in your store? Don’t worry. This article will cover the basic knowledge about WooCommerce cryptocurrency payment and present you with the step-by-step guideline on creating a cryptocurrency payment gateway on your WooCommerce store. So that customers who are using cryptocurrencies can check out on your site.

WooCommerce Crypto Payments: How it benefits your business?

Including a crypto payment option in your WooCommerce store can offer you a lot of benefits.

• It reduces the chance of being fraudulent than other traditional payment options like bank or credit card.
• Thanks to being created from a complex set of code, it is extremely difficult to hack cryptocurrency
• The transaction fees are lower than other payment options
• There is no latency issue since all transactions are made immediately so
• There is no chance of personal information leakage as it doesn’t store any personal or financial information
• Cryptocurrency is a completely digital and decentralized system and doesn’t require a third-party banking entity to process the transaction. Therefore, it’s all organized through a digital network (also known as a blockchain), which is basically just a ledger that keeps a secure and (pseudo-)anonymous record of all transactions.
• Your customers can pay for their products from anywhere on the globe without worrying about the different currencies.

Using an alternative payment gateway for cryptocurrency can expand your market and enhance security for both payment and your store. This is a system that satisfies both customers and the marketplace owners’ needs.

Regarding WooCommerce payment, you may be also excited to read the article How to Set Up WooCommerce Apple Pay on Your eCommerce Site?

Can you add Cryptocurrency payment methods to your WooCommerce store without a plugin?

Currently, there is no available option that is prebuilt in WooCommerce. If you want to include WooCommerce crypto payment in your store, you need to install a third-party plugin. Below, we are going to present the step-by-step process of creating a gateway for crypto payment and also offer you the list of the best WooCommerce crypto payment plugins.

How to accept WooCommerce cryptocurrency payments in your store?

To allow clients to pay with cryptocurrencies on your WooCommerce site, let’s follow the process below.

1. Sign Up With a Digital Payment Processor Service

The first step to take is to sign up for a digital payment processor service. In this article, we are going to use the BTCpay plugin for WooCommerce, so in this step, you should set up your own BTCPay server that will allow you to process Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transactions. Don’t worry, it’s much easier than it sounds. There are 2 methods I will recommend here — self-hosted (VPS), and 3rd-party hosting. But the service from a third-party has more risks and limitations, and less security. In general, you will have to trust the 3rd-party host to continue supporting your server. So in this tutorial, I recommend getting a digital payment processor service by self-hosted.

A self-hosted BTCPay server means you own and are in full control of the settings on your payment module. There is no 3rd party taking a cut of your transactions, and you can easily route users straight from your checkout page to a BTCPay module where they can pay with any Bitcoin wallet of their choice.

Hosting on a VPS does have a monthly fee, but this is better than hosting it on a local machine. If hosted locally, your server could go down (your computer auto-updates, power goes out, etc). If you aren’t around when there is an issue, there might be hours or days where your customers can’t make purchases on your site. With a VPS you have guaranteed up-time, and get notifications if there is downtime or scheduled maintenance. Also, if you don’t have systems admin or networking skills, a VPS makes setup much easier and less technical.

You can go to  LunaNode and follow the step-by-step process below to host your BTCPay Server with very reasonable pricing at $8.8 for a month.

#Step 1

The first step is to click on the Sign Up button and create a LunaNode account.

# Step 2

Once you are logged in, you now can sign up an API key from the API section on the site header.

# Step 3

After successfully registered an API account, you will get your own API ID and API key as follows.

# Step 4

The next step is to go to launchbtcpay.lunanode.com, then paste the API Key and API ID you just created, and continue.

# Step 5

The LunaNode system will automatically generate a domain for you to access the BTCPay Server settings. Just Bookmark this URL and click Continue to proceed with the process.

# Step 6

Here, you can customize the web-wizard settings according to your needs. However, the default settings are most likely OK.

But in the Lightning Implementation dropdown options, you should select the lnd or c-lightning if you want to include Bitcoin Lightning payments on your WooCommerce store.

# Step 7

Click Launch VM and Wait 6–7 minutes for Virtual Machine deployment

# Step 8

All things have done. Just visit the domain URL from step #5

Now a copy of the entire Bitcoin blockchain needs to load on your node.

2. Install and Activate a WooCommerce crypto payment Plugin

As mentioned earlier, after you set up your BTCPay Server, I will install and activate the BTCpay plugin for WooCommerce. You can do it by navigating to Add New under Plugins section > type BTCpay in the search box > Install Now > Activate

The settings can then be found in Woocommerce > Settings > Payment > BTCPay:

Then click on the Setup button to start setting up your cryptocurrency payment on your WooCommerce store. From the settings, you must enter the API key from your BTCPay Server URL:

You can find the API token from within your BTCPay URL under Stores > Store Settings > Access Tokens > Create New Token

After you paste the API token from BTCPay Server URL into the WooCommerce Settings, just make sure the BTCPay setting is toggled ON in WooCommerce. Your Checkout Page should now automatically display Bitcoin as a payment option!

3. Create a Crypto Wallet

Just like a traditional bank, you need a wallet to store all your currencies that you buy. You can access it any time using your private key.

In either method, it is important to have your own personal wallet. If you used the self-hosted method, it is required. In order for the Bitcoin your receive from customers to actually get sent to you, you need to have your own Bitcoin wallet!

One of the most secure, simple, and longest-running wallets you should use is Electrum. To create a bitcoin wallet with Electrum is quite easy. Just download the wallet that suits your equipment and then refer to the instructions for creating a Bitcoin Electrum wallet to get the detailed process. After finishing, you will get a password (also called seed phrase), just store your seed phrase in a very secure place and do not lose it or give it to anyone, or your wallet will be hacked and stolen all Bitcoin.

4. Linking a Personal Wallet

# Step 1:

Once having the Electrum Wallet, go to the wallet settings and get your public key to enter into BTCPay Server. you can find your public key by navigating to Wallet > Information. Now you can copy it (should begin with ‘zpub’ or ‘xpub’) then paste it into your clipboard:

# Step 2:

Now, go to the BTCPay Server URL and navigate to Stores > Store Settings > Derivation Scheme > Modify, then paste your public key into the Derivation Scheme field shown below:

You will get a group of Bitcoin addresses to verify the public key is correct. Go back to your Electrum Wallet and click the Addresses tab to make sure the addresses in the wallet match the addresses shown on your BTCPay Server. Now, when the customers pays you in Bitcoin, it will go straight to your Electrum Wallet.

Bonus Tip:

Having a high balance on an active, online wallet like Electrum (known as a hot wallet) can be a security risk, so you should look for a more secure way to store your Bitcoin if you want to hold it long-term. In such cases, you should get a cold wallet solution like Ledger Nano then move your bitcoin from the hot wallet to the physical cold wallet.

5. Converting Altcoins to BTC

An outstanding feature of BTCPay Server is that it can also exchange altcoins to Bitcoin. That’s why the plugin can help you accept multiple cryptocurrencies including bitcoin and altcoins. This lets you reach more potential customers who want to checkout with the other popular cryptocurrencies. To convert altcoins to Bitcoin, follow the step below:

# Step 1:

Just go to your BTCPay Server URL, click Stores > Settings > Third party Payment methods.

You will then have to go create an account with either Changelly or Coinswitch. Between these two options, you should go for Changelly since it is more popular and more likely to be consistently supported/updated. You can find your Changelly API info by logging into your Changelly account and going to the bottom of this page.

# Step 2:

Copy the API key from that website to paste into your BTCPay Server settings and complete the process.

Once you finish the process, customers select the Bitcoin payment method at Checkout then they will see a Conversion tab on the BTCPay module. They can now choose any cryptocurrencies to checkout. Then they will be converted to Bitcoin and sent directly to your Electrum wallet.

Conclusion

In conclusion, with the current development of the blockchain concept, opening a WooCommerce crypto payment gateway on your store is necessary for the future, which gives your customers more choices when making the payment process and broaden your market. It also makes things easier for them as multiple payment options feature multiple transaction rates.

We hope this article helped you understand more about the importance of accepting crypto payment and how to create a WooCommerce crypto payment gateway on your store.

If you have any further questions or recommendations, please let us know by leaving a comment below.