Global brands, neighborhood retailers, first-time entrepreneurs, and creators selling niche products all turn to WooCommerce to start selling online. Built on WordPress, WooCommerce gives businesses full ownership and control over every part of their ecommerce experience. Today, more than four million online stores run on WooCommerce, making it the leading ecommerce platform among the internet’s top one million stores while powering over 30% of all ecommerce worldwide.
Maintaining its leadership has required Woo to constantly innovate as customer expectations, payment preferences, and commerce models have evolved. For more than a decade, Woo has worked with Stripe to give businesses a flexible ecommerce platform that helps merchants launch faster, sell globally, and grow on their own terms.
“Stripe works truly as a partner. It’s not a customer-vendor relationship—we’re invested in each other’s success,” said Silu Modi, VP of payments partnerships at Woo.
Built for global commerce
Woo has partnered with Stripe since 2016 to power core payment processing capabilities, including the Stripe for WooCommerce extension and merchant of record service. In 2021, Woo significantly expanded its partnership with Stripe to launch WooPayments, a fully integrated payments solution built specifically for the WooCommerce ecosystem.
Stripe helps WooCommerce give merchants the best of both worlds. They can use a fully integrated Woo-native payments experience through WooPayments, or a direct connection with Stripe with the extension.
Today, WooPayments serves merchants in nearly 40 countries across North America, Asia Pacific, and EMEA. Merchants can use WooPayments to manage transactions, payouts, refunds, disputes, and reporting from within the Woo dashboard. By bringing these capabilities into a single, comprehensive dashboard, WooPayments helps merchants spend less time bouncing between multiple tools and more time focused on their customers, products, and growth.
Stripe technology enables every aspect of WooPayments. Woo uses Stripe Connect to quickly onboard merchants, manage compliance and identity verification, and support payouts. With Instant Payouts, merchants can receive their funds in minutes instead of days to improve their cash flow. Woo also used Stripe Billing to support merchants with recurring revenue models, such as subscriptions, memberships, and installment-based services, while using Stripe Capital for platforms to give eligible merchants access to financing offers directly through WooPayments.
Through Stripe Payments, Woo gives merchants access to Stripe’s Payments Intelligence Suite, an AI-powered set of tools for payment optimization, fraud prevention, and business intelligence. WooPayments also includes Stripe Radar, which helps detect and block fraud in real time, while built-in Adaptive 3D Secure supports regulatory compliance and minimizes unnecessary friction.
More ways to pay
WooCommerce’s open-source model resonates particularly strongly outside North America, where merchants value data ownership and platform flexibility. Today, roughly 60% of WooPayments volume comes from EMEA.
One of the most interesting things about WooCommerce is our global diversity. Most platforms are either very US-centric or another specific market. By partnering with Stripe, we’re able to give merchants access to a global ecommerce experience.
In addition to accepting credit cards and digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, merchants can use WooPayments to accept local payment methods across key markets worldwide, including iDEAL, Alipay, WeChat Pay, Bancontact, EPS, GrabPay, Multibanco, and Przelewy24. Merchants can also enable buy now, pay later options, such as Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay/Clearpay, allowing them to get paid up front while giving customers more flexibility at checkout.
To reduce payment costs, Woo rolled out Instant Bank Payments, Stripe’s next-gen ACH solution available exclusively through Link. Less expensive than card payments, US customers can pay directly from their bank accounts in just a few clicks. Payments are confirmed instantly and funds settle in two business days, just like card payments, while Stripe guarantees the risk of bank-initiated returns.
WooPayments also includes WooPay, an express checkout experience built on Link by Stripe. Returning customers can skip re-entering their details and complete purchases in just a few taps—across any WooPayments-enabled store. For merchants, WooPay reduces checkout friction without requiring any additional setup.
From online stores to in-person commerce
Whether selling at a market stall, checkout counter, salon chair, or customer job site, merchants can use the same Woo ecosystem to accept payments wherever business happens. Woo made it possible for customers to manage online and offline sales in the same place by integrating Stripe Terminal, a set of tools for accepting in-person payments, into WooPayments.
In addition to providing access to precertified card readers, Woo enabled Tap to Pay via the Stripe Terminal SDK so merchants can accept in-person payments with only a compatible iPhone or Android device—no card reader required. With Tap to Pay built directly into the Woo app, merchants can download the app, launch a store, and start accepting in-person payments in as little as two minutes.
“For these new users, it’s all about accessibility,” said Doug Aitken, lead of payment operations at Automattic, the company behind WordPress and Woo. “Starting a business can feel daunting, but Woo—together with Tap to Pay and the Stripe Terminal SDK—makes it easy to start up and sell stuff. Do you have an iPhone? Great. Download the Woo app, make an account, and now you’re a merchant.”
Preparing for agentic commerce
Agents are already searching for products, comparing options, and completing purchases on behalf of customers. As AI tools begin to reshape how people discover and buy products, Woo and Stripe are collaborating on the infrastructure that will enable Woo merchants to sell via agents.
“For us as a platform, we see it as our responsibility to enable our merchants to be where their customers are. They’re looking to us to provide solutions so they can get access to this new distribution and sales channel,” said Beau Lebens, CEO and artistic director at WooCommerce. “As their platform provider, we’re in the position to say, ‘Here are all of the emerging protocols, here are the systems that you need to be a part of.’ And we can set that up in a way that they can just hit a button and turn it on.”
<br>As a launch partner for the Agentic Commerce Suite, WooCommerce is helping merchants make their products discoverable to agents through a single integration. Businesses can connect their product catalogs to Stripe once, and then sell across multiple agents. Stripe handles discovery, checkout, payments, and fraud protection.
Stripe is very central to parts of the actual transaction process in particular. Those are some of the gnarliest technical pieces of exactly how we navigate these transactions.
With a uniquely broad merchant ecosystem that ranges from independent makers and specialty retailers to global brands, Woo is especially well positioned for this next wave of commerce. Agentic commerce creates the potential to reach the right customer faster and more efficiently.
“The great thing about Woo is we’re not just for big-box merchants that sell all the same things as everyone else. We have a depth of unique merchants that sell interesting items who are especially well-positioned for more personalized AI-powered discovery. Instead of relying only on traditional search engines or paid advertising, agentic commerce will help merchants get matched directly to customers based on intent, preferences, and context,” said Modi.
As Woo helps merchants prepare for the next generation of commerce, Stripe will remain a key partner in bringing new opportunities to the Woo ecosystem.
WooCommerce and Stripe have an exceptional partnership. It’s rare to see two companies move as fast to give merchants more options, more functionality, and more ways to grow their business.
