Online Payment Methods

When setting up your store to receive payments, you can choose from over 65 payment gateway integrations to accept payments online. We also offer integrations to the most popular digital and mobile wallets, such as Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal, and more. Your store country and currency will determine the payment gateways available to you.

Offering multiple options will increase your conversion rate and reduce cart abandonment. There is no limit to how many payment methods you can set up, although we recommend not using more than two or three. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you may want to include an offline method as well.

Multicurrency

Multiple transactional currencies are now available for all stores. If you've enabled transactional currencies in addition to your store's default currency, you can use the currency selector at the top of the payments screen to show available payment methods for each of your transactional currencies.

You may have gotten advice about choosing a merchant service provider and setting up a payment gateway. These may seem like the same thing, but there are some important distinctions to make. In this section, we will explain what a payment gateway and merchant service provider (MSP) do and how these interact on BigCommerce.

Payment Gateway

A payment gateway refers to the software that processes online payments, such as credit card processors and digital wallets. Ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce incorporate payment gateways into their systems to provide a way to collect payments online.

“Payment method” refers to the choices provided to shoppers at checkout. For example, the option to pay with a credit/debit card or a PayPal account is a payment method, and the payment gateway does the actual processing.

Merchant Service Provider

A merchant service provider (MSP) is a company that provides the products and services necessary to accept credit cards, debit cards, and other forms of electronic payment. They act as intermediaries between your business and credit card companies or banks. Payment gateways are often tied to merchant accounts with the merchant service provider.

Note that merchant service providers are sometimes referred to as payment service providers or PSPs.

How this works on BigCommerce

BigCommerce works with merchant service providers to offer various payment gateways for merchants to choose from. When a merchant wants to use a particular payment gateway, they will need to connect to a merchant account. This creates the relationship between the merchant and the MSP.

PayPal is an example of an MSP that has multiple payment gateways offered on BigCommerce. A merchant registers an account with PayPal to connect the payment gateway to their store.

To view the available payment gateways, go to Settings › Payments and click on Online Payment Methods.

Locate your preferred gateway and click Set up. You will be automatically redirected to that payment gateway's setup page. You will see a list of required credentials. These can be found by logging into or contacting your payment gateway.

Once you've entered your credentials and settings, click Save. Your payment gateway is now set up. Try running a test order to get an idea of how this will look to your customers.

Although the setup is slightly different for each payment gateway, most methods will have some of these settings:

• Display Name — how the payment option will appear to your customers at checkout (we recommend "Credit Card")
• Duplicate window — the period after which an identical order can come in without being marked as a duplicate and deleting it
• Test mode — allows you to run a transaction without charging your card; we recommend only using Live or Production to avoid losing funds on legitimate purchases

The payment gateways will display on your checkout page alphabetically in order of type (offline, online, digital wallet), regardless of the Display Name. Some payment gateways, such as PayPal and PayPal powered by Braintree, will also show a button on the cart page.

The following payment gateways are our most popular ones. For a list of all payment gateways supported by BigCommerce, see Available Payment Gateways.

Credit Card Processors

• PayPal (recommended for all merchants based outside of the US, UK, and FR)
• PayPal powered by Braintree (recommended for US, UK, and FR merchants)
• Stripe
• Adyen

Buy Now, Pay Later

• Affirm
• PayPal Pay Later

Accelerated Checkout

• Bolt
• Link

A digital wallet is an account that allows you to make online purchases from participating retailers without having to enter your payment information. For example, with Apple Pay, a customer using Apple Wallet can check out on any store integrated with Apple Pay and will not need to enter their payment details.

• Apple Pay
• Amazon Pay
• Google Pay
• Visa Click to Pay
• Venmo (via PayPal powered by Braintree and PayPal)

Where do I manage my funds?

You will control and direct funds in your merchant account with your merchant service provider. Usually, this is where you will connect to your bank account or offer refunds.

Can I have more than one merchant service provider?

It is possible to use more than one MSP, but it will split where you manage your funds. For example, if you want to offer PayPal as a payment method as well as credit card processing, you may connect the payment gateways for Paypal and Authorize.net. This does mean that any purchases made with PayPal will be managed on your PayPal Merchant Account while your Authorize.net account handles any credit/debit purchases.

Where do I report issues with a charge?

All disputes about funds, payments, and charge errors should be directed to the merchant service provider. BigCommerce only receives the error codes from the payment gateway in the Store Logs. These error codes are useful to have on hand when troubleshooting the issue with the merchant service provider.

How can I see changes to my payment methods?

When a payment method is enabled or disabled, or its settings are altered, a notification will appear in the control panel dashboard.

You can also see records of changes to your payment methods in the Staff Action Logs.