The Payments feature lets you accept credit and debit card payments for goods, services, subscriptions, memberships, donations, and more. The Payments feature can be used to create recurring revenue or one-time payments to your site.
The Payments feature is available for all sites with a WordPress.com paid plan. The feature is also available for self-hosted sites on a paid Jetpack plan.
In this guide
- Payments Options
- Connecting to Stripe
- Creating Your First Payment Plan
- Payment Button Block Settings
- Payments Management
- Selling Physical Products
- Selling Digital Products/Sending Emails to Subscribers
- Checking your Revenue and Subscriber list
- Canceling Subscriptions and Issuing Refunds
- Related Fees
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Video Tutorials
The Payments feature has multiple block options for various kinds of payments, including the Donations Form block, the Payment Button block (this guide), and the Premium Content block.
To select one of these blocks:
- Go to Pages or Posts in the left sidebar of your site dashboard.
- Edit the page or post where you want to add the Payment button.
- Select the + Block Inserter and select Payments.
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Using your keyboard, you can also type /payments on a new line and press enter to quickly add a new Payments block.
You can also skip the Payments options and search directly for the option you want to use, such as the Payment Button block, by selecting the plus sign ( + ) icon and typing payment in the Search field to search for the type of payment block you want to use.
The Donations Form block allows you to accept credit and debit card payments for donations, contributions, and tips. You may ask your website’s visitors to support your creative pursuits, an organization, the work you’re doing, or whatever makes sense for your website. See our guide here.
The Premium Content block allows you to accept one-time, monthly, or annual payments on your website for access to exclusive content that you create. See our guide here.
The Payment Button block is the focus of the remainder of this guide. It allows you to collect payment using Stripe, which ensures that credit card data is encrypted and sends receipts to subscribers automatically.
For recurring subscriptions, subscribers are automatically billed at the end of their Renewal Period and the funds are transferred to your Stripe account. The buyer can cancel the subscription at any time. Payment information does not transfer to other tools that use Stripe payments, such as WooCommerce.
The first time you add a Payments block you will be prompted to connect your WordPress.com account to Stripe. Stripe is the payment processor used to take payments for the Payments feature. You can set up a new Stripe account or connect to an existing one.
Select the Connect button to be taken to Stripe’s website to connect your WordPress.com account. If you already have a Stripe account, you can log in at the top of the screen. Otherwise, fill out the form to create your new Stripe account.
Any money you earn using WordPress.com Payments will go into your Stripe account. From there, you can move it to the personal bank account of your choice. WordPress.com never has any access to the money you earn.
Once you fill out the Stripe form and connect it to your WordPress.com account, you’ll be taken back to your WordPress.com account and you’ll see “Congrats! Your site is now connected to Stripe. You can start making money by adding your first subscription!”
After adding the Payment Button, your next step is to create a payment plan. This plan can be for a one-time payment, monthly recurring payments, or yearly recurring payments. In each plan, you can manage the price, subscribers, and emails which are all described in this tutorial.
You can also select a payment plan you created previously.
To create your first plan, follow these steps:
- Add the Payment Button block following the steps in the previous section.
- Select Add a payment plan and fill in the following details:
- Price: how much the payment will be for
- Currency: what currency the payment will be collected in
- Describe your subscription in a few words: this description will appear on the emails your customers receive
- Renewal interval: the frequency in which your subscribers are billed. This can be either monthly, yearly, or a one-time payment.
- Select Add this payment plan when you’re done.
- Where it says Add text… type the text you want your button to display, such as “Buy Now” or “Purchase”.
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You can add multiple Payment buttons to a page if you’d like to offer a range of price points.
The Payment Button block has additional settings on your sidebar that can help you manage your plans and edit your button color settings.
You will find additional block settings in the right sidebar when you click on the block. If you do not see the sidebar, you may need to click the Settings icon in the top-right corner to bring up the settings. This icon looks like a square with two uneven columns:
Once you add a plan, select the Payments button and you can see the following options on the sidebar:
- Manage your payment plans: a quick link to your earnings, subscriber list, products, and link to connect your Stripe account.
- Add a new payment plan: change the payment plan associated with the specific button.
- Mark this payment plan as a donation.
- Enable customers to pick their own amount.
- Width settings: Choose from the available options or set a custom width for your Payment Button block.
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When you select a Payments block to make it reusable, make sure you select the whole block that groups all the features that you want.
You can manage your Plans by visiting Tools → Earn → Collect Payments. Payments provide a suite of tools to help you monitor and grow your subscription base.
Under your Customers and Subscriber list, you’ll find options for editing your payment plans. You can modify their price, renewal frequency, and other options detailed below.
After selecting the arrow on the right of that section, you’ll see your list of plans.
To edit the details of an existing plan, select the three dots to the right of the plan and choose Edit.
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Transactions using this block do not account for taxes or shipping and will only charge the amount specified. If you wish to capture taxes or shipping in addition to the price, you can include this in the transaction amount when setting up the block.
When you edit a plan, you can set up:
- Currency
- Price
- Renewal schedule
- Description
- Enable the “Pay what you want” option. This option allows your contributors/paid subscribers to customize the “contribution amount” during checkout. The default price will be the one selected by you, but it will be possible to change it during the checkout process.
- Enable the option to allow the same customer to sign up multiple times to the same plan.
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If you change any prices, existing subscriptions will not be affected. They will continue renewing at the same rate they started with.
To delete an existing plan, select the three dots to the right of the plan and choose Delete.
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Any existing subscriptions will continue. If you want to stop subscriptions for existing customers, please contact a Happiness Engineer.
By now, you can accept payments. If you are selling a physical product, you will need a way to collect your customers’ shipping details. You can do this using the Form block. We suggest this process:
- Publish the page that has the Payments block on it.
- Create a new page and add a Form block. Customize your form to collect information from your customers (name, address, phone, etc.)
- Change the form’s submit button text to something like “Next” or “Proceed to Payment”.
- Make sure to set up this form to redirect to another webpage on Submission. The page you should redirect to is the page where you added your Payments block.
In other words, your customers will follow this process:
- Fill in the form with their details
- Use the button to submit their information and then be redirected to the page with the payment button
- Submit their payment.
If you wish to deliver a digital product to your customers, such as a PDF file, you can do so with the Payments block.
Your subscribers will receive a confirmation message when they purchase from your site. You can use this option to:
- Send additional information
- Include a downloadable link to your digital products
You can edit this in the Email tab of your payment plan settings (see previous section.)
You can view a detailed breakdown of your revenue by visiting Tools → Earn → Collect Payments.
- Total earnings: shows all charges collected by Payments buttons on your site.
- Last 30 days: shows the revenue you’ve earned over the last 30 days.
- Next month: shows upcoming charges in the next 30 days. This assumes that nobody unsubscribes, and does not include any new subscribers.
Below this section, you’ll find the list of your subscribers as well:
At the end of the list is a link for downloading a CSV file containing a list of your subscribers with their email addresses, subscription data, and other information. You can use that file to connect payments to any accounting or fulfillment systems you use.
Your subscribers can cancel any time from their WordPress.com accounts. You can also cancel their subscriptions from the subscriber list. To manage your subscribers, go to Tools → Earn → Collect Payments
On the right side of the subscriber list, there is an ellipsis (three dots) menu where you can find this option:
Selecting Cancel Subscription will cancel the subscription immediately so that the customer will no longer have access to the product or service they subscribed to and they will not be billed again. However, canceling will not refund the customer. To issue refunds, you have to do this from your Stripe Dashboard. Follow the instructions here to issue a full or partial refund.
Fees for payments are based on the WordPress.com or Jetpack plan you have and are calculated as a percentage of your revenue:
| WordPress.com Plan | Related Fees |
|---|---|
| WordPress.com Commerce | 0 |
| WordPress.com Business | 2% |
| WordPress.com Premium | 4% |
| WordPress.com Personal | 8% |
| WordPress.com Pro (Legacy) | 2% |
| WordPress.com Starter (Legacy) | 3% |
| WordPress.com free | 10% |
| Jetpack Plan | Related Fees |
|---|---|
| Security and Complete | 2% |
| Security Daily | 4% |
| Jetpack free | 10% |
| Woo Express Plan | Related Fees |
|---|---|
| Essential | 0 |
| Performance | 0 |
In addition to the fees listed above, Stripe collects 2.9% + US$0.30 for each payment made to your Stripe account. Not in the USA? Check Stripe’s fees in your currency.
This system allows you to offer Payments with minimal upfront investment. As you collect more subscribers, it may make sense to move to a higher plan to retain more revenue.
Note that if your WordPress.com or Jetpack plan expires, the fee associated with your plan will increase to 10%. The Stripe fee will be unaffected.
You can disconnect Stripe by going to Tools → Earn → Payments section. When you scroll to the very bottom of the page, you will see Disconnect Stripe Account. Disconnecting your Stripe account here will remove Stripe from all your WordPress.com and Jetpack sites, prevent visitors from purchasing a subscription, and block renewals of existing paid subscribers.
Use the Premium Content block in the WordPress editor to create subscriber-only content or a specific call to action (Subscribe/Login) for non-subscribers.
Some visitors will become subscribers immediately, while others might need multiple reminders. That’s why it’s common practice to repeat offers multiple times across your site and in multiple posts and pages.
To simplify the process of adding the same Payments button in multiple locations, each new button includes all the price points you’ve already added. When you insert a new Payments block into your post, you can select one of your previously-added payment plans.
People who decided to support your site expect to get something in return for their support along with your great content out there. We’ve noticed the most successful creators focus on providing added value and on keeping their supporters engaged by:
- sending emails to their community.
- publish videos or other art for their subscribers.
- remind their fans that all of this is possible because of their support.
And above all: continue creating.
To start accepting payments using a Stripe account, you must be a citizen or own a company in one of the following countries. Your customers can pay using a credit card issued anywhere in the world.
Countries
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Bulgaria
- Canada
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Hong Kong
- Ireland
- Italy
- Japan
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malaysia
- Malta
- Mexico
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
- United States
Currencies
- USD
- AUD
- BRL
- CAD
- CHF
- DKK
- EUR
- GBP
- HKD
- INR
- JPY
- MXN
- NOK
- NZD
- PLN
- SEK
- SGD
Depending on your goal, you may benefit from one of these video tutorials to learn how to use Payments for specific situations:
