“I dont have a foreign account, how do I pay you?”
A recent message to Mr. Toyin Awofala, managing director of Greengo Technology, was received from a potential customer some time ago. This is one of the numerous complaints he usually gets from customers. Mr. Toyinn has just launched an innovative and sustainable transportation solution, redefining urban mobility in Nigeria. It was an incredible feat and achievement, especially with a website that allowed people to book mobility transportation easily. However, customers often encountered roadblocks when it came time to pay, not because they weren’t interested.
The problem occurred because his website only supported PayPal and Stripe, which have limited availability in Nigeria. Each lost sale wasn’t easy to overlook and caused him more concern. Thousands of Nigerian Business owners face a similar issue, just like Mr. Awofala, who is willing to sell online physical products, digital downloads, or services. But their dilemma is how to accept local payment.
The truth nobody is telling you is that having a website to showcase your services isn’t enough. If customers encounter a payment roadblock, your sales productivity will be affected, and your business will struggle to achieve the desired visibility. In 2025, you shouldn’t doubt the ability to enable fast and easy payment on your WordPress site; it is an essential need, not a want.
Read through this content, and you will learn how to achieve that.
Why Accepting Online Payment Is the Ultimate Best Choice For Nigerian Businesses?
As a business owner, regardless of your service, your ability to receive online payments from customers significantly contributes to your brand’s growth. Below are the reasons why you shouldn’t hesitate to accept payment online and its importance.
- Convenience over stress. No customer wants to go through stress just to make a payment. Once you activate online payment receipt, customers can make payments instantly without delay.
- It Makes You Genuine. It is a swift hack that announces you are a genuine and professional business owner with a proper checkout system, enabling security and safety.
- Widen Visibility. You gain good visibility by selling to potential customers across Nigeria and internationally, supported by the correct payment methods.
Advantages of Competitive: It’s a privilege to meet customers’ needs and modern expectations and adapt to the digital landscape.
Why Use WordPress for Payment?
WordPress has been a robust content management system with its strong efficiency powering over 40% of websites across the globe. Due to its flexibility and excellent services, Nigerian business owners are using it because:
- Flexibility and Versatility.WordPress allows you to utilize payment methods from debit cards to digital wallets and bank transfers. Additionally, templates – they are easy to built for matching brand identity, and plugins like WooCommerce allow you to create a personal online store that’s user-friendly without coding.
- Quick Support And Reliable Security. With WordPress, you receive support only when needed, without stress. It also offers security that protect your website against hackers. Additionally, all payment transactions are encrypted for secure payments.
- Managable & Affordable. You can start small and scale as you expand your business visibility by using the freely available plugins for your brand objectives. Additionally, WordPress is an open-source platform that anyone can use for purposes aligned with CMT.
- Coding isn’t a Necessity. WordPress is for everybody; you can control or manage your website without the need to code. With any comfortable page builder, you can manage your add and drop without hiring a developer.
- Dashboard Navigation. Every feature on WordPress is easy to navigate, making it universal and consistent for everyone using it.
Local Payment Gateway for Nigerian Businesses
Several local payment methods are available for Nigerian business owners to accept payments from Nigerians, making it seamless for customers to place orders and pay via USSD, bank transfer, or bank card with a local bank. This provides customers with the convenience of making multiple transactions.
PAYSTACK: Paystack is a leading local payment gateway integration that offers excellent service, catering to entrepreneurs of all sizes. It boasts a record of being used by most Nigerian business owners. Nearly five African countries rely on it, and each month, it receives ₦10 billion from customers making orders.
Paystack enables smooth rides through reliability and efficiency, ensuring successful transactions. Additionally, one of its top-notch features is that you don’t need a separate website for payment. You can use their page for payment, and all transaction payments are completed within 24 hours.
- Cost. The setup is free.
- Payment speed. 99% guarantee
- Date to receive payment. After 24 hours
- Transaction Methods. Card, bank account, USSD, PoS, Visa QR, mobile money, bank transfer, Apple Pay, or Visa QR.
Flutterwave: Another master in the Nigerian market offers Nigerian business owners maximum support and advantages to accept numerous payments through various methods. Flutterwaves goes beyond local payment integration; it swiftly supports local business owners in providing payment solutions to major platforms like MTN and Piggyvest, which remains awesome.
Flutterwave is making a significant move by providing tools to accept payments and manage finance. Its plug-ins work smoothly with WordPress efficiently.
Currently, 11 countries support Flutterwave, providing business owners with the opportunity to receive payments from these countries.
It’s worth noting that Flutterwave and Paystack are primarily designed for local support, offering easy conversion, even though they also support foreign payments.
International Payment Gateway
As an entrepreneur looking to expand, you should aim to reach a potentially vast global audience. This will enable international customers to receive payments, helping them settle their accounts after placing an order. Let’s review the following to understand the payment method.
Stripe is one of the largest companies that helps business owners receive money from customer offers. Stripe has been successful with payments, despite its large user base. Although Nigeria’s business owners hardly use it due to its conditions, registering a legal entity in support of the country, like the US & UK,
Paypal: Its oftenly use via it app on phone or website that permit customers to make transfer successfuly. Hoever it works differently for nigerian bussiness owner. It can only be used with third party set up or partner country like US, UK and other eligible countries.
As an entrepreneur willing to strive, ensure the local gateway first before considering international ones. This will make your customers loyal and eliminate any barriers.
Choosing the Right WordPress Payment Plugin
A plugin is like a software on you install and add it to your WordPress It enhances features and improves good perfomance, for strong security or internal or external backup. These are the most trusted and use plugins in Nigeria.
Woocommerce: It’s an e-commerce store platform that help entrepreneurs design, customize, and ideally manage their online store activities, strictly for WordPress, and it requires no payment to install, therefore link it with your:
- Paystack WooCommerce plugin
- Flutterwave WooCommerce plugin
WP Simple Pay: is a WordPress plugin designed to process online payments from potential customers directly from WordPress, using Stripe as the payment gateway. It is recommended for service-base businesses that allow you to register for various payment methods.
It’s advisable to choose businesses based on your bussiness services, if you are selling product choose WooCommerce, for rendering services to seek donations WP is a good option.
Simple Step-by-Step How to Set Up Online Payments On WordPress
Step 1: Install Your Payment Plugin.
- On your WordPress dashboard
- Click on Plugin
- Find, add new, and search for your preferred plugin, Paystack, or WooCommerce.
- Click install and activate.
Step 2: How to Connect to Your Payment Gateway.
- Open an account with Paystack or Flutterwave.
- On the plugin setting, paste your public and secret API keys{note these keys in your payment dashboard}.
Step 3: Set up your Currency and Checkout.
- Dont forget to switch your site to Nigerian Naira
- Complete your checkout page
- Add a transaction description page and configure your redirects after
- Ensuring redirects receiving payment
Step 4: Test in sandbox mode. Flutterwave and Paystack enable testing to ensure that the settings and integration are okay and ready to work by making a fake transfer for testing
By following the highlighted process accordingly, you can start accepting payment.
Tips for Smooth Payment Integration
As a business owner, once you start processing payments, it’s crucial to keep track of every detail. This helps a lot.
- Ensure Built-in Dashboard. By using the built-in dashboard, this will guide you on having the full opinion of payments you have, WooCommerce Paystack, Flutterwave, or Flutterwave-enabled dashboard usage to know which payments received, the total amount of transactions, names, dates, payment and successful payments, successful or the lookout.
- Work On Failed Fayment. There are times when the payment misfunctions. Go throughhe log toee if there isareny currently hanging ererrorso rectify.
- Automatic Email Notification. On successful completion of an order, a receipt is automatically generated by sending a notification. It builds trust and confidence.
- Monitor Abandoned Carts. There are customers who often forget to complete orders, plugins like Retainful are used to notify customers to complete the orders, this will save you from abandoning customers who abandon carts.
- Payment Conditions. State the expected amount to pay, the charges, process of paying, due date to complete payment, and process of payment method.
Why is Local Payment Support is Essential in Nigeria
As an entrepreneur, you might be thinking why local payment support is esssential for your brand and assume Stripe and PayPal are international payment gateways that would suffice for your brand and give you a professional look, however, if your product brand is mostly for Nigerians, it is not an option but a need.
- Receive Payment Through Paystack Or Flutterwave. Use Flutterwave or Paystack by enabling local payment to receive payment with naira directly to your registered account, no troubleshooting, no third-party intervention to withdraw, and transaction are successful and easily without delay. This works perfectly if you need urgent money. However, successful payment is rare. Without the integration of local support.
- Customer Support is Top-notch For Nigerian: Business owner using local payment support, Flutterwave, Paystack, their support supguarantees gwell-orientedl with local issues and offers quick response. They know what to do when you complain and offer the best solution to rectify the situation, which is a rare advantage to you.
- Trust: when they realize that your payment is well familiar with trusted local gateway, customers always feel secure to patronize Flutterwave, Paystack, or other similar platforms, ensuring that you are good enough and no need for concern about currency, foreign or exchange, scam.
- Local Payment Multiple Use. Payment method isn’t only restricted to master card alone, it supports USSD, transfer, POS, mobile wallet, and QR option, which customers select and complete payment.
Conclusion
At this age of digital, take advantage of the offers. Your payment system should be on the first line to prioritize after setting up a website to showcase your products, because a lack of an efficient working cash register can make you go through some setbacks.
