This post is a review of a selection of plugins which can be installed in WooCommerce websites to enable crypto payments. Many of the companies offering these plugins also have direct equivalents available for Magento, Shopify, Big Commerce and other website platforms.
Normal disclaimers apply - I'm not a financial adviser, do your own research, yadda, yadda.....
WooCommerce is a popular website platform for small and medium-sized e-commerce businesses. It is a plugin to the WordPress blogging platform, and normally ends up with a whole bunch of plugins itself. These perform a whole host of different functions, including things like search engine and image optimisation, managing product feeds for Google, Facebook and Bing ads, and (relevant to this post) enabling a variety of payment options customers can use.
Because WooCommerce allows you to offer customers a choice of payment options, it's easy to go over the top and offer everything you think they might want. I believe this is a mistake. First (and most important) because it's easy to confuse the customer, and a priority is to have a streamlined, intuitive checkout process. Secondly, because the more payment methods you have running, the more your revenue will be split into different silos. This creates increased reconciliation and bookkeeping work, can delay payments if you have to reach a threshold before they transmit funds, and will likely mean you don't get the best rates from each payment processor.
As an example, on my website, I offer PayPal and Stripe. PayPal allows customers to pay either with their PayPal account, or by debit/credit card. Stripe is focused on payment by debit or credit card, but also allows Google pay, Apple Pay and a couple of other minor options. I deliberately haven't enabled Amazon payments on my website, because there are far too many strings attached for my taste (including having to apply all the policies and A-Z dispute process they force us to use on Amazon itself).
I'm now considering adding payment by crypto to my site, so I've been looking through a selection of plugins which enable this. Before I make a definitive decision, I'll definitely be talking to my customers to make sure there's a demand for this option !
There are a number of factors to consider when picking a crypto payment plugin;
- Which coins & tokens customers can pay with.
- What fees they charge, and is there a threshold for withdrawal ?
- How easy is it to install ?
- How well the plugin is supported
- Does it have a history of regular maintenance and updates ?
- Who publishes it, and what kind of reputation do they have ?
- How good are the reviews, and are there any significant issues that have been identified by reviewers ?
Moving on to the actual plugins, here is a selection of the ones I've looked at so far, in alphabetical order in the interests of fairness. I've only covered brief details below. It's worth noting that the number of reviews is low compared to the number of installations of each, which is pretty normal for WooCommerce plugins; people only reach for the keyboard is they are especially impressed or frustrated !
Bitpay
4000+ installations, last updated 3 months ago. Reviews are 4 out of 5 stars from 4 reviewers.
Supports a selection of altcoins including BTC, BCH, ETH and USD Stablecoins. Fees are stated as 1%, although it's not clear if this includes or excludes the gas for the actual transaction. Unlike many of the other plugins, it mentions it converts prices for customers from whatever local currency you've got your website set up in.
Blockonomics
6000+ installations, last updated 2 weeks ago. Reviews are 4.5 out of 5 stars from 27 reviewers.
Supports BTC and BCH only, with settlement direct to your wallet (avoiding the risk of using a gateway wallet). Quotes a fee of 1%. Although it's limited in terms of the altcoins it can take, Blockonomics comes across as being very professional and well supported. Reviews are generally very good indeed, and it's clearly aimed at businesses who want to accept crypto payments but aren't experts in the field so want something simple, functional, and well supported.
BTCPay
1000+ installations, last updated 3 weeks ago. Reviews are 5 out of 5 stars from 17 reviewers (who seem to seriously love this plugin !)
BTCPay can handle a wide variety of Altcoins, including ETH and ERC-44 types, but as an open source plugin, requires more coding skill to setup than most of the other plugins. I guess there's always a trade-off between simplicity and flexibility ! No transaction fees other than network fees, although you should also consider hosting costs if you are self-hosting it..
Coinbase
9000+ installations, last updated 4 months ago (it looks like they don't update it very often). Reviews are 3.5 out of 5 stars from 10 reviewers.
Supports all the coins & tokens traded on Coinbase, which probably makes it the most flexible plugin in this respect. You need to open a COINBASE commercial account, you can't just take payment into your normal wallet there. No mention at all of fees, and of course you'll need to pay another fee to get the funds out of Coinbase into your own wallet.
CoinGate
1000+ installations, last updated 2 years ago. Reviews are 3 out of 5 stars from 11 reviewers.
Supports 50+ altcoins including BTC and ETH. However, it hasn't been updated in ages, hasn't been tested with the latest versions of WooCommerce, and some of the recent reviews suggest it's impossible to withdraw your coins. It's starting to look seriously like abandonware, which is a shame because it looks like they had a good product.
CoinMarketStats
1000+ installations, last updated 2 weeks ago. Reviews are 4.5 out of 5 stars from 11 reviewers.
This is a self-hosted solution with settlement direct to your own wallet. Although it quotes no fees, that's a little cheeky because they operate a freemium model, with an annual subscription needed if you want to automate orders rather than having to manually process the payments. With automatic order processing, it supports 8 altcoins including BTC, ETH and DOGE; with manual processing, it seems to be able to support any coin you want to take. They make a point of saying no KYC or bank verification is needed to get set up, which implies that most of the other plugins may require this even though they don't say so.
CoinPayments
3000+ installations, last updated 1 year ago. Reviews are 3.5 out of 5 stars from 6 reviewers.
The description on this one is a bit light on hard information, beyond saying it's opensource ! Reviews seem to either love it or hate it. I get the impression that this could be almost a "legacy" product, with most of the users having installed it a while ago.
CryptoWoo
Unlike most of the others, this plugin is available through their own website rather than the standard WooCommerce plugin page, meaning there's no information available on the number of downloads, and no reviews. It operates on an annual licence model, with a limited free version available as well. The more you pay, the more options are open to you, and the more types of altcoin you can take. This looks like a complex plugin which might need professional help to install (unless you are a developer yourself), but the complexity also makes it potentially very flexible and powerful.
GoURL
3000+ installations, last updated 3 days ago. Reviews are 4 out of 5 stars from 36 reviewers.
Supports BTC and a variety of BTC-type coins, but not ETH types, and several reviewers have commented that it's a limited and somewhat outdated selection of altcoins. It looks like it's very easy to install, but has quite a high threshold before you can move coins from the gateway wallet to the security of your own one, and unlike many other crypto plugins doesn't appear to allow you to withdraw directly to fiat (I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing !) Another one the reviews either love or hate with nothing in between !
TripleA
2 months, 4 stars (8), 2000+ BTC only, claims only fee is 0.8% commission if you withdraw to fiat.
2000+ installations, last updated 2 months ago. Reviews are 4 out of 5 stars from 8 reviewers.
This plugin only works with BTC, which is a bit limiting but certainly simplifies things ! They offer two settlement methods. The first is direct to your wallet, which avoids the risks entailed in using a gateway wallet. The second is direct to your local fiat (19 currencies supported) which is a great help in mitigating the risks of exchange rate volatility, with a 0.8% commission charged.
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A couple of things strike me about all these plugins. In many cases, the fees they charge are either not stated, or unclear, and they generally skirt around transaction fees charged for the customer to actually make the payment (which will be on top of any fee they charge).
Many of these plugins are front-ends for an exchange account, which you'll need to sign up for and possibly go through a KYC/verification process. The ones which aren't are generally open source and need more skill to implement. Few of them mention whether or not they'll work with websites where the prices are anything other than US dollars.
One thing I notice is lacking from all of these plugins is any mention of ways for the customers to pay partly in crypto and partly in fiat. While I appreciate it would be hard to implement, it would be a wonderful way to soak up some of the token dust that so many people have little bits of !
From my perspective, I'm probably going to keep looking to see what other options might be out there that I haven't yet discovered. Several of these plugins look interesting, but none of them ticks absolutely all of my boxes yet. However, it's a rapidly developing field, and it'll be interesting to see how these plugins develop and what new ones emerge.
