Payment processing is the sequence of steps that moves money from a customer’s account to yours after a sale. For...

When a customer pays by credit card in your WooCommerce store, roughly half a second of network activity determines whether...

Merchants setting up WooCommerce payments quickly run into three terms that sound interchangeable: payment gateway, payment processor, and merchant account....

If you’ve ever researched payment solutions for your WooCommerce store, you’ve almost certainly encountered both “merchant account” and “payment gateway”,...

Credit card processing fees are predictable once you understand the structure — but the payment industry has historically made that...

Most WooCommerce merchants pay more for card processing than they need to, not because of bad luck, but because they’re...

Choosing between flat rate and interchange++ pricing is one of the highest-leverage decisions WooCommerce merchants make. Get it right and...

Payment processing for small businesses has gotten faster to set up but more complex to navigate, more options, more pricing...

Accepting payments in healthcare isn’t just a technical problem, it’s a compliance problem. Every payment transaction in a healthcare context...

Healthcare payment processing involves challenges that don’t exist in retail commerce — partial payments, insurance coordination, HSA/FSA cards, recurring billing...

Medical practices collecting patient payments online face a specific intersection of security, compliance, and patient experience requirements. Standard e-commerce payment...

Healthcare providers who want to accept credit cards face a compliance question that most payment processors don’t answer clearly: does...

Healthcare organizations that accept card payments operate under two overlapping compliance frameworks: PCI DSS, which protects cardholder data, and HIPAA,...

Dental practices face payment complexity that general-purpose processors aren’t designed to handle. Between insurance coordination, treatment plan financing, membership programs...

Telehealth has become a permanent part of healthcare delivery, and with it comes a payment challenge that in-person practices don’t...

Online pharmacies and pharmacy e-commerce operations face a layered compliance challenge that most payment processors aren’t equipped to handle. Beyond...

A patient payment portal — a secure online interface where patients can view their balance and pay, is one of...

Medical spas occupy a unique position in the payment landscape: they’re part healthcare practice, part retail business. Some services, injectables...

Getting classified as high-risk by a payment processor doesn’t mean you can’t accept cards, it means you need to find...

CBD merchants have a payment processing problem that has improved significantly since 2019 but hasn’t fully resolved: most major card...

Legal cannabis businesses operate in one of the most payment-constrained environments in commerce. Despite being fully legal in dozens of...

Firearms businesses, gun dealers, FFLs, ammo retailers, parts and accessories sellers, face payment processing restrictions that can come without warning...

Supplement and nutraceutical businesses are automatically classified as high-risk by most payment processors, not because supplements are illegal, but because...

Kratom vendors face a specific combination of challenges: a product in a legal gray zone, payment processors that frequently terminate...

Delta 8 THC sits in one of the more complex positions in the hemp and cannabis space: federally legal under...

Peptide retailers occupy a specific corner of the high-risk payment landscape: the products themselves are often legal research chemicals, but...

A high-risk merchant account is not a second-tier product, it’s a merchant account designed for businesses that standard acquiring banks...

Credit card surcharging — passing the cost of card processing directly to customers who pay by card, is legal in...

A chargeback is a forced reversal of a card transaction initiated by a cardholder through their issuing bank. For merchants,...

Chargebacks are inevitable for online merchants, but high chargeback rates aren’t. The right combination of prevention tactics can reduce your...

Friendly fraud also called first-party fraud — occurs when a legitimate cardholder makes a purchase and then files a chargeback...

Chargeback management is the ongoing process of monitoring disputes, reducing new chargebacks, responding to existing ones, and keeping your chargeback...

When a chargeback is filed against your business, you have the right to fight it through a process called representment....

Visa overhauled its dispute monitoring system in 2025, replacing the legacy Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP) and Visa Fraud Monitoring...

Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR) is Visa’s automated dispute management program that resolves qualifying disputes before they become chargebacks. For merchants...

Chargeback representment is the formal process of disputing a chargeback by submitting evidence to the issuing bank through your payment...

Your chargeback ratio the percentage of transactions that result in chargebacks is one of the most closely watched metrics in...

Payment fraud is the single largest operational risk for ecommerce merchants. In a card-not-present environment, which includes every WooCommerce transaction,...

Card-not-present (CNP) fraud is the dominant fraud type for ecommerce merchants. Without a physical card to verify, every online transaction...

PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance is a requirement for every business that accepts, transmits, or stores...

PCI DSS compliance sounds intimidating, especially for small business owners without a dedicated security team. The good news: if you’re...

PCI DSS compliance for merchants is largely self-assessed using a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ). There are multiple SAQ types and choosing...

WooCommerce fraud prevention is a practical challenge for every store owner processing real transactions. Unlike enterprise merchants with dedicated fraud...

Address Verification Service (AVS) is one of the most widely used fraud prevention tools in card-not-present payments. It checks the...

3D Secure (3DS) is the authentication protocol that adds a verification layer to card-not-present transactions. Version 2 3DS2 — is...

Choosing the right WooCommerce payment gateway affects your fees, the payment methods available to customers, fraud protection, and how much...

Apple Pay lets customers complete purchases with Face ID, Touch ID, or a double-click on Apple Watch — no card...

WooCommerce can handle recurring payments for subscriptions, memberships, and service retainers — but the setup requires the right combination of...

The payment methods you offer directly affect conversion. Customers who don’t see their preferred way to pay abandon checkout —...

Accepting payments in multiple currencies lets customers see prices in their local currency and pay without manually converting amounts —...

WooCommerce stores must comply with PCI DSS — but what that means in practice depends heavily on how your payment...

Cart abandonment at checkout is one of the most expensive problems in ecommerce — industry averages hover around 70%. A...

If you’ve set up a WooCommerce store and need to start accepting credit card payments, you’re in the right place....

Stripe and PayPal are the two most recognized payment processors for online businesses. Both handle card payments, both have significant...

Stripe dominates payment processing mindshare, but it’s not the right fit for every merchant. Account holds, limited support, rising fees,...

Adyen and Stripe occupy different positions in the payment processing market. Stripe built its reputation on developer-friendly APIs and serving...

Stripe is the default choice for many WooCommerce merchants — it’s well-known, has a decent plugin, and getting started is...

PayPal is often the first payment option WooCommerce merchants enable — it’s familiar to buyers, easy to set up, and...

Choosing a payment processor for an ecommerce business involves evaluating fees, payment method support, fraud tools, integration quality, account stability,...

WooCommerce Payments is the native payment gateway built by Automattic (the company behind WooCommerce). It’s powered by Stripe under the...

Square built its reputation on the card reader — a simple, flat-rate solution for small physical retailers. Its online selling...

Subscription payment processing is fundamentally different from one-time transactions. Recurring billing requires tokenized payment storage, merchant-initiated transaction flagging, smart retry...

Recurring billing software automates the charge-retry-renewal cycle that subscription businesses would otherwise manage manually. But the right platform depends heavily...

SaaS payment processing isn’t just collecting a monthly fee — it’s managing thousands of simultaneous subscription states, failed payment recoveries,...

The average WooCommerce store abandons 70% of carts before checkout is completed. Abandoned cart recovery is one of the highest-ROI...

Your gateway’s authorization rate — the percentage of payment attempts that get approved — directly determines your revenue. A 2%...

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the single most important metric for subscription businesses. It tells you the current health of...

Most merchants don’t know their actual cost of accepting cards. Your payment processor’s advertised rate is only part of the...

Your monthly merchant processing statement contains the truth about what you’re paying — but most merchants can’t read it. Processors...

Payment processing costs vary dramatically depending on which processor you use, how you’re billed (flat-rate vs interchange-plus), your monthly volume,...

Interchange fees are the largest component of your payment processing cost — and they vary dramatically by card type, merchant...

Accepting payments from customers in other countries involves more than just processing the transaction — it means offering local payment...

Selling internationally from WooCommerce requires more than a currency switcher plugin. You need a payment gateway that can actually process...

The traditional payment model — where merchants apply for merchant accounts through an ISO, wait days or weeks for approval,...

Most merchants watch their revenue but ignore the payment data sitting underneath it — authorization rates, payment method mix, chargeback...