This is the part that stalls most shops, and hardly ever for technical reasons. WooCommerce connects to any payment method that has a plugin, but the method has to exist, it has to be contracted in your name, and it has to be one your customers actually use.
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Do not copy the lists you find elsewhere. Most articles about WooCommerce payments were written for other markets and are full of names that are no use here. What matters is what your customer has on their phone.
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Where you connect it, inside WooCommerce
| 1 |
Open WooCommerce, Settings and the Payments tab. That list is everything the shop accepts.
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Out of the box the list is short, and entirely manual: direct bank transfer, cheque and cash on delivery. None of them needs a contract.
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Every automatic method arrives as a separate plugin, installed under Plugins and Add New, or uploaded as a file when the operator supplies it.
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Once installed, the plugin appears in this same list. Enable it, open Manage and fill in the credentials the operator gave you.
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Drag to reorder. The first one in the list is preselected at checkout, and it is the one most people will use.
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Save, then place a test purchase from start to finish, at a small amount, with real money.
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The methods used around here
The table below is the real landscape of this region. Not all of them exist in every country, and each is contracted with whoever runs it, not with us.
| Method |
Who runs it |
How it reaches the shop |
| M-Pesa |
Vodacom |
An approved merchant account plus a plugin that talks to their interface. The buyer types their number and confirms on the phone |
| e-Mola |
Movitel |
Directly, or through a payment aggregator that bundles several methods into one connection |
| mKesh |
Tmcel |
The same route: operator or aggregator |
| Entity and reference |
The banking network |
The buyer gets an entity and a reference number and pays at an ATM or in their banking app |
| Multicaixa Express |
The Multicaixa network |
A merchant account on the network, and a plugin or aggregator to wire it into the shop |
| Multicaixa reference |
The Multicaixa network |
A reference generated with the order and paid at a terminal or in the app |
| Bank transfer |
Your bank |
Needs no plugin at all: you show the details, the customer transfers, and you confirm by hand |
| Cryptocurrency |
A specialist processor |
It exists and it works, but it is a minority. Check your customers would ask for it before putting it in the shop |
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The merchant account is yours, and the plugin is a third party’s. We host the shop, and we host it well. We are not a payment processor, we do not issue merchant accounts and we do not build the connections to the operators. Your credentials come from the operator or the aggregator; the plugin is maintained by whoever wrote it. The line is drawn in how far our support goes.
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What we accept, and why it is useful to you
The live list of what we take payment with is at payment methods, and it varies by brand and by country. It is not your shop’s list, but it is a fair indicator of what people here use without hesitating. To see how it feels from the paying side, read how to pay your invoice.
While you have no automatic payment
Do not hold the shop back for this. Two methods work from day one and require no contract at all.
| 1 |
Direct bank transfer. Enable it in the payments list and write your account details in the instructions field. The customer orders, transfers, and you mark the order paid.
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| 2 |
Cash on delivery. It works well for deliveries in town and it disarms the mistrust of someone who has never bought online.
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| 3 |
Answer fast. With either of them, the order left waiting a day for confirmation is the order you lose.
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Ask for the proof of payment over WhatsApp. It is quicker than e-mail and the customer already has it on the phone: putting WhatsApp on your site.
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Before you trust a payment plugin
| Check |
Why |
| When it was last updated |
A payment plugin untouched for years is an open door |
| That it claims support for the current WooCommerce |
Old versions break without warning and the shop stops closing orders |
| Who answers when it fails |
The operator, the plugin author, or nobody. Find out beforehand, not on the day |
| Whether it stores credentials in plain text |
The keys sit in the site database. A break-in takes those too |
| Whether you can test it |
Sandbox mode, or at least one small real purchase, on a test site: a test site |
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Your shop should never store card numbers. Where a card method exists, the card is handled by the processor and the shop never sees it. What that saves you is in selling online: PCI and card data.
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Only advertise what you have tested. A payment icon in the shop is a promise. If the buyer reaches checkout and it is missing, or it fails, you lose the sale and the trust.
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