How to Use Bitcoin for WordPress Payments
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If you’ve spent some time working with WordPress, you have no doubt encountered the usual suspects with payments, like PayPal or Stripe. While they may have a lot to offer, there are definitely alternatives that you can look at – Bitcoin, being the not-so-young contender to their thrones.
So, what exactly is Bitcoin? In simple terms, it is a digital currency (and a ‘cryptocurrency’) that allows you to process global payments from anyone at all, with ease.
Today, as your favored WordPress agency for development, we’ll guide you to some plugins that’ll help you do just that.
Bitcoin Plugins for WordPress
Every plugin available for this purpose will allow you to integrate Bitcoin payments into WordPress, but some of them go the extra mile. More importantly, a good number of them are completely compatible with existing WordPress services like WooCommerce. These are a few recommendations:
1. GoURL
We’re kicking this off with one of the most feature-rich options – GoURL Bitcoin Payment Gateway. Not only does it allow you to accept regular Bitcoin, but it also works great with eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce and even processes payments in popular alternatives like Litecoin and Dogecoin.
It’s also free to use and is compatible with other free addons. GoURL’s versatility means the settings menu can feel a little complicated to newer users, but their helpful customer support should take care of any initial hiccups you might face.
2. Bitcoin / Altcoin Faucet
This is another free plugin that works with a lot of cryptocurrencies, but isn’t quite a payment processor – it’s a system that works with your website and drops small Bitcoin rewards to your users, thus driving traffic your way and even rewarding you based on the ads that are displayed to them.
Besides being free it’s also easy to use and customize, though it hasn’t been updated recently, so do make sure it’s compatible with your version of WordPress.
3. Cryptocurrency All-In-One (Free/Premium)
This one has a free version that is quite capable, but also a premium version that does many things…really well. Besides processing Bitcoin payments, it lets you view tickers of updated prices and exchange rates, charts, and even an interactive calculator for cryptocurrencies, all on your WordPress site.
The latest version even includes the facility to earn cryptocurrency commissions for certain user actions! Another factor in its favor is how it lets us paste in shortcodes virtually anywhere to use any feature that it supports. The default theme is a bit dated, but it lets you write your own CSS so feel free to use that magic wand.
Adding a ‘Pay With Bitcoin’ Button
We’ll look at adding a payment gateway for Bitcoin in just a minute, but a ‘Pay With Bitcoin’ button can be real handy, and the most convenient way to add one of these is to use ‘BitPay’ which is a Bitcoin wallet that holds your Bitcoin funds and works similar to a bank account for Bitcoin. You can create an account for free here.
Login to the account you’ve created, and locate ‘Payment Buttons’ under ‘Payment Tools’, and then you can tweak settings such as the default price, button size, or payment notifications. ‘Generate’ will provide you with an HTML code that can be copied and added to any part of your WordPress site, even a widget, and it’ll show up on the live site.
Adding a Payment Gateway for Bitcoin
The plugins we discussed above are all capable of this, but since its process is the simplest by far, we’ll be looking at Cryptocurrency All-In-One.
With this plugin installed, you can find ‘Payment Settings’ under ‘Cryptocurrency’, where your payment addresses from your wallet can be entered. You can also set up an email address for notifications and then save it.
Let’s say you’d like to accept a payment of, say, 0.001 Bitcoin or $10 for a product, say, ‘Shingles’ on that product’s page. Head on over there and insert the shortcode [cryptopayment item=”Shingles” amount=”0.001”].
Bitcoin is the default, so for payments in other currencies, just designate it correctly, like amount=”10 USD”. Save this, and the payment gateway will now be visible on your site. For any further help, feel free to reach out to your WordPress agency for development.
With that, you’ve now made your first foray into the world of Bitcoin payments on WordPress, and we hope you’ll soon be comfortable handling multiple cryptocurrencies and wowing your visitors with the range of payment options they can access!
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