Payment Methods
Payment methods represent the different payment options available to customers during the checkout process in an e-commerce store. Spree supports many types of payment methods, including both online and offline options. This guide describes how to add payment methods to your Spree store.
Let’s begin by explaining the difference between a Payment Gateway and a Merchant Account.
Payment Gateway - A payment gateway is a service that authorizes credit card payments, processes them securely, and deposits the funds into your bank account. A payment gateway performs the same functions as a credit card swipe machine at a restaurant or retail store, it just performs these functions for purchases made online instead of in person.
Merchant Account - A merchant account is a type of bank account that allows you to accept credit card payments online. If you have a retail business and already accept credit card payments, then you more than likely have a merchant account. When you start to sell products online, you may need to call your bank and ask that they set you up with an Internet merchant account. An Internet merchant account allows you to accept payments online without having the customer’s credit card physically in front of you.
When researching payment gateway options, you may find that they offer an all-in-one solution that includes both the gateway and the merchant account. This is just something to be aware of and to evaluate if it makes sense for your store. Payment gateways also charge a fee for their services. Here are a few of the fees you might come across when evaluating providers:
Setup Fee - A one-time charge to set up your payment gateway account.
Recurring Fixed Monthly Fees - A fixed monthly fee that a payment gateway provider charges for access to their services and reports. Some gateways break this charge down further into a monthly Gateway Fee and a Statement Fee.
Transaction Fees - A charge for each purchase made on your e-commerce store. The pricing structure for these fees differ per gateway. A popular structure is to charge a percentage of the purchase price plus a flat fee. For example, 2.9% of the purchase price plus $0.30 per transaction.
Spree enables you to utilize the payment method of choice for your e-commerce store. We have two preferred payment gateway partners and a long list of payment gateways that are supported by default in Spree. We also enable you to add a custom payment gateway and offer offline payment options such as checks and purchase orders.
Read through the following explanatory text to add one of the supported payment gateways as a payment method on your store.
To configure one of the supported payment gateways, you must first install the Spree Gateway extension on your store. More than likely, you will want to ask someone from your technical team to do this. Once this extension has been installed, you can configure one of the supported gateways in the Admin Interface by clicking the “Configuration” tab and then clicking the “New Payment Method” button.
If you installed the Spree Gateway extension, you will see a long list of gateways in the “Provider” drop down menu. Select the one that you would like to add.
Select Payment Gateway Provider
Select whether you want the payment method to appear on the Frontend or the Backend of your store, or both.
The Frontend is the customer-facing area of your store, meaning that the payment method will display as a payment option to your customers during the checkout step.
The Backend is the Admin Interface for your store. Site administrators typically select this option when they want to make a payment option available to their internal staff but not to their end customers. For example, you might want to offer purchase orders as a payment option to customers on a one-off basis, but only if they contact one of your customer service representatives via email or telephone.
There is a possibility to set an Auto Capture feature for your payment methods. Once you set Auto Capture to the Yes option for a particular payment method, all the payments will be captured automatically. At this point, all the payments will be captured without Admin’s direct interference. However, Use App Default (false) is default setting for a newly created Payment Method.
Set up Auto Capture Payment Method
Select “Yes” if you want the payment method to be active on your store. Select “No” if you want to create the payment method, but not present it on your store until a later point.
Give the payment method a name. The value you enter will appear on the customer-facing area of your store, on the Payment page as seen below:
Payment Method Name
Description
Add a description for the payment method. This field is optional and is only displayed to internal users and not to customers.
Click “Update” once you’ve input the desired settings for your new payment method.
It is possible to add a new payment gateway that is not included on the supported by default gateway list, but doing so is outside the scope of this tutorial. Please consult with your development team if you need this functionality.
To edit the configuration settings for an existing payment method, go to the Admin Interface, click the “Configuration” tab, and then click the “Payment Methods” link. Find the payment method that you would like to edit on the list that appears. Click the “Edit” icon next to the payment method to edit its settings.
Make the desired changes to the payment method settings and then click “Update” to save them.
Processing orders and the payments associated with them are covered in detail in the Processing Orders guide.
Last modified 1yr ago