PostFinance being integrated into a WooCommerce shop as a payment gateway is one of the things that you might have thought about doing as you work on your e-commerce site.
After taking a sip of your hot cup of coffee/tea, you’ve opened the ever so reliable – Google, searched if that’s possible, and found your way to this blog post. Eureka! your search is now over, this is the solution that you are looking for! Don’t just take my word for it, keep on reading and see for yourself!
In this guide, we’ll be discussing the step-by-step instructions for you to set up our PostFinance payment gateway as easily as possible.
Additionally, we’ll talk about what PostFinance is and why you might want to use it in WooCommerce as your payment method of choice.
The plugin mentioned in this guide:
AG WooCommerce PostFinance e-Payment Gateway – Adds a PostFinance payment gateway to your WooCommerce website with ease.
Want to head straight to the tutorial? Click here.
What is PostFinance?
PostFinance is one of the leading financial institutions in Switzerland with more than 3 million customers who chose to use their services to process online payments for their companies and businesses.
PostFinance requires an account to be created so that you can use its features. You can request them for a test account from their support page here.
PostFinance charges you (as the account owner) per month for the service it is also possible that you might be charged per transaction as well.
They also offer different services like digital banking, investments, insurances and mortgages. You can learn more about their products here.
The next question that you might have is, “Why would you prefer PostFinance over other payment processors anyway?”
Why you might want to use PostFinance with WooCommerce instead of PayPal
Using PayPal might be a tempting prospect, but if you’re thinking about adding PostFinance, here are a few things to consider:
PostFinance rates are better
Paypal charges over 3% per transaction plus a fixed fee based on currency received as seen here – https://www.paypal.com/ch/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees (applies only to Swiss PayPal) while PostFinance has better and cheaper rates.
PostFinance ensures the best security
The number one thing that you would need to know when dealing with payment solutions is security. As a website owner, it is your responsibility to ensure that customers can safely purchase your products. Our plugin and PostFinance handles this for you.
With PostFinance and the AG WooCommerce PostFinance e-Payment Gateway plugin ensures no card data is stored locally on your server.
All sensitive card data is stored directly on PostFinance’s payment system, and 3D secure authentication adds an additional layer of security, guaranteeing fewer chargebacks or fraudulent transactions.
PostFinance’s hundred year experience
PostFinance was founded around 1906. This gives you the confidence that the company knows the ins and outs of the business. You can take a look at their company’s historical timeline here.
These are just some of the benefits of using PostFinance, now let’s get to the good part of setting our plugin to work with your site:
How to set up PostFinance as a payment gateway in WooCommerce
AG WooCommerce PostFinance e-Payment Gateway allows you to take secure and fast payments on your WooCommerce store using the PostFinance payment gateway.
This plugin also :
- Allows you to Process refunds directly in your WooCommerce admin panel.
- Has 3D Secure authentication.
- Has PSD2 (Payment Services Directive) ready.
- Allows you to use Dynamic templates.
- Has an easy to follow Setup Wizard.
- Stores sensitive API details outside of the database.
- Support Direct HTTP server-to-server requests.
To get started, download AG WooCommerce PostFinance e-Payment Gateway from the We Are AG store: https://weareag.co.uk/product/ag-woocommerce-postfinance-e-payment-gateway/
Note: Before following the steps below, you must have your PostFinance account setup and ready to go (You will need to login using your PSPID and password). You can request them for a test account here.
Then follow these steps:
- Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin
- Choose the zip file you downloaded, upload, and then click Activate Plugin
- Once activated, you’ll need to enter your licence key
Once the plugin is activated, you’ll be presented with our plugin wizard. This will take you through the steps needed to get set up.
Set up your PostFinance payment method
There are six steps to this wizard, they include the following:
- Asks you to input your PostFinance login ID, also known as PSPID.
- Tells you what operation mode (Sale or Authorization) that you can use.
- Step three allows you to set your SHA encryption method. This resource will help you if you need more information on SHA.
- Will ask you to set the SHA-IN passphrase.
- Step five will ask you to check over a few settings in your PostFinance account and set up your SHA-OUT passphrase.
- Step six asks you to check a few more settings and gives you the option to set the plugin’s error log and add a test product. We recommend you tick both of these to help you while you set up your store.
That’s it! Your store is now set up and ready to start testing, debugging and above all, selling your products.
For full information in what these sections mean, how to fill them in and test transactions, see our detailed documentation here: https://we-are-ag.helpscoutdocs.com/category/208-setup
In general, this process should take around 30 minutes to set up but we’re always on hand if you need a little extra support.
How to use our PostFinance payment gateway with WPML for multi language sites.
If you are not familiar with WPML, it’s one of the most popular WordPress translation plugins which helps you set up a multi language site.
Having a multilanguage site would help you increase the range of your audience. Let’s say you have a site that sells machine equipment, you can make your site available English, Japanese, Italian , Korean etc. you name it and WPML will help you make it possible.
For our plugin, what you need to do is to translate the WooCommerce checkout page to your preferred language and the important part is that you are using the different languages in directories as the language format from WPML > Language settings.
Selecting this option would set your URL following this format:
yourdomain.com/language/page-name
For example, the japanese translated page would be served:
yourdomain.com/ja/page-name where ja is the language for Japanese.
For spanish, it would be yourdomain.com/es/page-name where es is the language for Spanish and so on.
This is our supported option for WPML and if you were to choose the other options, it would not process the transaction..
For a step by step procedure on how to use WPML with our plugin, please do refer to this tutorial.
Roundup.
In this guide, you’ve learned why you might use PostFinance as your payment method of choice for your WooCommerce store and how to set it up in 30 minutes with the AG WooCommerce PostFinance e-Payment Gateway plugin.
The investment you make in setting up a faster and more secure payment method such as PostFinance for your online store could work to increase customer trust, experience and as a result, reduce cart abandonment