When you pay for goods in a retail store using a plastic card for payment, the store will process the payment through their card merchant services provider (eg: Barclaycard, HSBC or Worldpay)
To offer payment online you also will need a merchant card payment provider, not to be confused with your bank, and two of the most popular online payment providers are Paypal and Stripe. Both services operate in a similar fashion and will allow debit and credit card payments from UK and Worldwide customers.
Both services operate a ‘free’ account service by which we mean there are no account fees. The merchant service simply takes a small transaction fee when it processes a payment.
It takes 10 minutes..
…to open an account online. You can choose to register online for a free Paypal Business or Stripe Account. If you already have a personal Paypal account it is very quick and easy to upgrade this to a Business account.
After Registering
After you have registered for your Stripe Account, Stripe will take you to a sandbox testing environment but you don’t need to do anything there. You should see this button ‘Switch to Live Account’ at the top of your screen, so click on this to exit your sandbox.
Once your account is open, we can help you obtain the necessary authentication codes that are required for us to link your Paypal / Stripe account to your website’s booking system. We’ve produced some instructions that should guide you step by step through this process.