How To: Accept Recurring Credit Card Payments in WordPress

“WordPress is so flexible that you can mold it into any kind of site you want!”

We have all heard that because WordPress provides you some building blocks in the form of plugins, themes, and codes. That’s why it is the best platform to start a blog.

But have you ever wondered how you can accept credit card payments in WordPress without touching a single line of code?

You can do so, and there are numerous plugins available for the same. But my personal favorite and value for money plugin for this purpose is WPForms.

Today in this article, I will show you how you can accept recurring credit card payments in WordPress using WPForms.

Why Accept Recurring Payments in WordPress?

Retaining existing customers is always better than attracting new ones. New customers will require more effort from your side.

Also, it is totally unknown for how long your new customers will stick with you. But your existing customers are familiar with your offerings, so their chances of retention are high.

Below are some of the benefits of accepting recurring payments in WordPress:

• Recurring payments help you keep your existing customers. They get charged automatically and regularly for your services.
• In the case of one-time payments, there are chances that the customer will ditch your business because of the manual transactions he/she has to make every month on your site.
• Recurring payments strategy is not unethical. Only after a proper consent, your clients can opt-in for it. As a result, recurring payments are always beneficial in building a strong relationship with your long-term customers.
• Recurring payments are effortless for both you and your customers. This gives you plenty of opportunities to scale your business.

All the points above make it clear that recurring payments are always better for your business no matter if you collect them through your online donation form, user registration form, or a simple order form that sells physical or even digital products.

WPForms can help you accept recurring payments through any kind of form.

So without taking any further, let’s take a look at how to accept recurring credit card payments in WordPress forms using WPForms and Stripe.

Accept Recurring Credit Card Payments in WordPress

Step #1: Create a New WordPress Form

As mentioned above, WPForms will help us take care of things. So, the first step is to install and activate the WPForms plugin.

WPForms adds the ability to accept recurring payments to your WordPress forms with the help of Stripe.

WPForms has a dedicated addon to make things simple for you. Go to WPForms » Addon and find the Stripe addon there. Install and activate the addon.

Once the addon is active, we can use it in any new or existing form created using WPForms. To create a new form go to WPForms » Add New.

For illustration purposes, I’m taking the example of a donation form that gives users the option to make a one-time donation or recurring donations.

Step #2: Customize WordPress Form Fields

The left side pane has all the fields that you can add to your form. You can drag them to the right side where your form is.

Clicking on any field gives you the ability to edit it make any changes to it. Fields can also be rearranged by dragging them.

To accept recurring payments using Stripe, you’ll need to add these two fields at least for your form to work right:

1. An items field such as Single Item/Multiple Items/Dropdown Items
2. A Credit Card field

In the case of multiple items, you can also add a Total field so that customers know exactly how much their card will be charged when they submit the form.

In my example, I’ve added a dropdown menu so that users can choose between donating on a recurring basis or make a one-time payment.

An Amount field is also added so that people can choose how much they want, a Total field, and the Credit Card field.

When your form is ready, click Save.

Step #3: Configure Payment Settings

When your form is ready, it is time to configure payment settings so that you can accept payments from people using the Stripe payment gateway through your form. For that, go to Payments » Stripe.

Then click the checkbox labeled Enable Stripe payments. Add a payment description, and select Email in the Stripe Payment Receipt.

The next step is to enable recurring payments for your forms. Scroll down a bit more on the Stripe settings panel and check the checkbox labeled Enable recurring subscription payments under the Subscriptions section.

Then, configure the following:

• Plan Name: title of the subscription and will appear on the Stripe transaction.
• Recurring Period: choose how often people will be able to make recurring payments like weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.
• Customer Email: by selecting Email from the dropdown menu, WPForms will be able to send a notification to the customer once they submit their form. Being able to contact people via the email they input on the form is required for Stripe’s recurring functionality to work.

The last step is to set the conditional logic rules since you give people have two donation options, i.e., one-time or recurring.

First, select the checkbox Enable conditional logic.

To make things super simple, configure the rule to say: Process payment as recurring if Dropdown is Monthly.

You can even choose different time periods so that any time someone wants to make recurring donations to your company; their payment will process automatically by Stripe according to the time interval you offered on your form.

Click Save, and you’re done!

To make sure everything is working as it should, test your form before adding it to a live page.

For help with this, here is a tutorial to walk you through how to test Stripe payments before accepting actual payments.

Final Words

That’s how you do it! Now you can easily accept recurring payments on your WordPress forms using the WPForms Stripe addon.

WPForms provides you with intuitive features to help you grow your business. It even lets you create signature forms in WordPress. Not only that, it helps you generate more leads. Make sure to check out our article on how to reduce order form abandonment.

So, what are you waiting for? Install the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today.