So you’ve set up your online Woocommerce store. Your products are looking great and the theme is functioning smoothly. Now comes the crucial part – adding payment functionality. 

But not all payment gateway solutions are the same. Some only offer a few payment methods and others, such as First Data Connect, give you as many payment options as your customers need.   

By integrating a First Data Connect payment gateway (now rebranded to Fiserv) into your WooCommerce store, you can benefit from America’s favourite payment gateway provider. And before you ask, the answer is yes. You can introduce their industry-leading solution to your UK-based online store! 

In this guide, we’ll be providing you with step-by-step instructions for adding a First Data Connect payment gateway to your WooCommerce store. As a bonus, we’ll outline what First Data Connect is and why you might want to use it in WooCommerce as your payment gateway of choice. 

The plugin mentioned in this guide:

• First Data Connect for WooCommerce – Add a First Data Connect payment gateway to your WooCommerce website with ease.

Want to head straight to the tutorial? Click here. 

Otherwise, let’s stop wasting time and dive right in! 

What is First Data Connect?

First Data Connect is a simple payment solution for connecting your online store to the powerful First Data Internet Payment Gateway. First Data Connect manages all of your interactions with credit card processors and financial institutions, allowing you to accept all major forms of payments for your online store, such as credit and debit cards.

Now operated by Fiserv, this payment gateway is one of the most popular solutions in the Western world. The company handles 45% of all US debit and credit card transactions, and their payment gateway solution is now available for UK customers. The company processes around 2,800 transactions per second and $2.2 trillion in card transactions annually. (Source)

With a track record that strong, it’s no wonder why so many WooCommerce store owners want to integrate it into their website! But there are several other benefits too. 

Why use First Data Connect? 

If you’re somehow not impressed by the figures listed above, then there’s plenty of other obvious benefits to using this particular payment gateway solution. 

First Data Connect is as secure as it gets

Security is everything when it comes to payments. You need a solution that protects you against fraud while ensuring that your customers’ payment data is safe from the prying eyes of hackers and cybercriminals.

The way customers pay for their orders First Data Connect is straightforward. When a customer is ready to pay, they’re redirected to the Connect Hosted Payment Page. Here they’ll securely enter their payment details. Once completed, they’ll be redirected to your site. 

“Connect includes MasterCard Secure Code, Verified by Visa, and SSL-encryption functionality to help protect you and your customers. As your Connect payment page is hosted securely by First Data, your PCI DSS compliance validation will be simplified.” – FirstData

First Data Connect accepts all major credit cards

To stand any chance of success with your online business, you’ve got to accept all major credit card brands. Otherwise, you face losing out to your competitors that can better accommodate consumer payment preferences.

With First Data Connect, you can accept Visa®, MasterCard®, American Express®, Maestro & JCB, to name but a few! But why stop at card payments? You can use the payment gateway to offer your customers all kinds of ways to pay, including but not limited to PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, AliPay, UnionPay, and more! 

In total, there are dozens of payment methods you can accept via the First Data Connect payment gateway. If you somehow manage to find a payment method not supported by this payment solution, then it’s probably not worth having! 

First Data Connect has UK-based support

One of the key differentiating factors of using this gateway plugin is that you have UK-based support available at your fingertips whenever you need it. We have experts on hand that can resolve any issues you may encounter, which isn’t always the case for payment plugins (they often use outsourced support centres). 

Better still, we have developed a step-by-step setup wizard (more on this later), meaning you can get set up and start accepting online payments within minutes.

Now we know the benefits of using this payment method for your online store, let’s get it set up and running.

How to set up First Data Connect as a payment gateway in WooCommerce

First Data Connect for WooCommerce allows you to accept fast and secure payments via the First Data Connect payment gateway.

This plugin also: 

• Offers 3D Secure authentication.
• Provides PSD2 (Payment Services Directive) compliance.
• Takes five minutes to set up.
• Provides hardened security.
• Has a straightforward, step-by-step setup wizard.
• Stores sensitive API details outside of the database.
• Offers direct HTTP server-to-server request support.

So without further ado, let’s get cracking! 

Make a start by downloading First Data Connect for WooCommerce from the We are AG store: weareag.co.uk/first-data-connect-for-woocommerce

Then follow these steps:

1. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin.
2. Choose the zip file you downloaded, upload, and then click Activate Plugin.
3. Once activated, you’ll need to enter your licence key (which you’ll be sent via email).

Easy so far, right? Once the plugin is activated, you’ll be presented with the plugin’s setup wizard. This will take you through the steps you need to set up your First Data Connect payment gateway. 

Step 1: 

Step one informs you that the First Data team will supply you with two logins, one for ‘test’ and the other for ‘live’. 

It’s always best practice when setting up a payment gateway to do this in test mode first and run several orders before switching to live mode. Otherwise, you could really get yourself in a pickle trying to process customer payments. Trust us, that’s not what you want for a brand new WooCommerce store.

Step 2:

The next step asks you to enter your Connect Store ID and your Shared Secret while directing you to where they can be found within your WooCommerce settings.

Step 3:

For step three, you briefly leave the setup wizard and complete actions in your First Data back office as instructed by the wizard. In essence, you are customising and defining the URLs for integration purposes with your online store. 

Note: it can take 30 minutes for those changes to take effect.

Step 4:

Step four instructs you to test the Connect payment gateway at least a few times to catch any system errors before going live. Here, you have the option to add a test product and enable the plugin’s error log. 

We would definitely recommend running through this procedure. Otherwise, as we mentioned above, you can run into some severe issues with your payment processing. That’s the last thing you want after working so hard to set up your online store!  

That’s it! Your store is now ready to test the checkout and orders in detail, debug, and above all, start selling products! You probably didn’t realise it was as easy as that, did you?

For further information concerning these setup sections, including how to fill them in and test transactions, see our detailed documentation here: we-are-ag.setup 

Generally speaking, the process should take around 30 minutes (remember you’ve got to wait for the URLs to update), although it’s more like five minutes of your actual time spent working on getting it set up. You can then move on to testing and debugging. 

We’ve made it as easy as possible for you with our plugin’s setup wizard. But of course, something unexpected might happen. So if you do get stuck or need a little helping hand from us, don’t worry. We’re always just a few clicks away. We’ve seen it all before, and our technical team will respond as fast as humanly possible to remedy the situation.

Add First Data Connect to your WooCommerce store 

In this guide, you’ve learned how to add one of the Western world’s most popular choices for a payment gateway to your WooCommerce store. 

With the First Data Connect for WooCommerce plugin, you can accept all major credit cards and other leading choices for consumer payment methods within a mere matter of minutes. It really is that simple! 

So what are you waiting for? Starting accepting online payments for your products or services with the First Data Connect payment gateway today.

The plugin featured in this guide:

• First Data Connect for WooCommerce – Add a First Data Connect payment gateway to your WooCommerce website with ease.