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Payment gateway comparison chart
| Gateway | Stripe |
Square |
Authorize.Net |
Braintree |
Chargify |
Freshbooks |
PayPal |
PayPal Payments Pro |
PayPal Payflow Pro |
USAePay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | $0 | $0 | $25?$49 one-time setup fee | $0 | Varies | $0 | $0 | $30 | $25?$99 one-time setup fee | Depends on reseller |
| Per-transaction fee | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 (US/CA), 2.5% (UK), 2.2% (AU), 3.6% (JP) | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 | Depends on reseller | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 | $0.10 + merchant account fees | Depends on gateway or merchant account |
| Merchant account included | - | - | Depends on reseller | |||||||
| Multi-currency support | USD | USD | ||||||||
| Countries | 9?AU, CA, DK, FI, IE, NO, SE, UK, US and more available in open beta | 5?US, CA, UK, AU, JP | 190?AU, CA, UK, US, and more | 46?AU, CA, UK, US, and more | Varies?You (merchant) must be located in a country where payment gateway provider is supported by Chargify | 2?CA, US | 203?AU, CA, UK, US, and more | 3?AU, UK, US | 4?AU, CA, NZ, US | 1?US only, but available with other resellers |
| In-form payments | - | |||||||||
| Recurring billing | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | |||
| Get started | Get started › | Get started › | Get started › | Get started › | Get started › | Get started › | Get started › | Get started › | Get started › | Get started › |
But what does it all mean? Payment gateway terms defined
Are you a freelancer? Small business? Do you mainly accept payments from people in your own country, or are you dealing with international customers?
These are just some of the important factors to consider when choosing from Wufoo’s online integrated payment gateways. Keep reading for payment gateway definitions and explanations, or take our quiz below to help you choose the provider that’s right for you.
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How does a payment gateway work?
When a customer enters in their credit card information into your online form, the payment gateway authorizes payments, validates credit cards, and looks out for fraud. Once the charge is approved, the payment gateway transfers the money from your customer’s credit card into your merchant account.
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What's a merchant account?
A merchant account is a type of bank account responsible for handling the funds transferred from a credit card, debit card, or bank account (your customers) to a merchant (you).
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Why do some gateways require a merchant account while others don't?
Some gateways, like PayPal, include both a merchant account and a gateway in a single solution. The all-in-one solutions tend to be a little more expensive and less feature rich, but they’re very easy to set up and great for beginners.
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Payment gateways fees
Pay close attention to whether or not a payment gateway has a monthly subscription-based fee, one-time setup fee, and/or per-transaction fee. A per transaction fee (like 2.9% + $0.30 in the chart above) means that if a customer pays you $100, the payment gateway will take $2.90 plus $.30 of that $100. So you’ll end up pocketing $96.80.
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What does "in-form payments" mean?
When we say “in-form payments,” we mean that the entire payment process is handled on Wufoo.com without the need to redirect people to a 3rd party for payment. So if a payment-enabled form is embedded into your website, your users will never have to leave your site in order to pay.
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What is recurring billing?
Some payment gateways allow you to set up recurring payments, meaning customers only have to enter in their information one time, and you’ll automatically bill them over a set period of time.
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Which credit cards do your forms support?
All of our online payment integrations support most major credit cards and accept multiple currencies from countries around the world.
How to start accepting payments today
Just sign up or sign in to Wufoo, select your existing form or create a new one, and enable payments for that form.
Each payment gateway has slightly different one-time information requirements, but all of our integrations are easy to set up.
Learn more ›
Let's make it official
Want to know why Wufoo is the best online form builder? When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend, and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast, and fun. Because we host everything, all you need is a browser, an Internet connection, and a few minutes to build a form and start using it right away. At Wufoo, we believe forms are the starting point for building anything useful on the web. Basically, they’re the most efficient mechanisms for collecting data from people. The problem is sometimes creating an online form isn’t very efficient. The process of creating a form and all the database structures and scripts necessary to make it work (not to mention useful) is a really tedious process that makes what should be a simple task (collecting and understanding information) not really worth the time, effort, or cost of the endeavor. The entire process could take you or your IT person days, if not weeks. With Wufoo, you can skip all the hard stuff (because it does it all for you) and start getting things done.