Payment plugins: Everything you need to know

With ongoing restrictions on the reopening of physical stores, shoppers around the world have had to change their purchasing habits overnight. They’re buying online and from businesses further afield to get the items they want. They may also be relying on stores without an online presence. As a result, businesses have been forced to adapt at a rapid pace. Now, e-tailers have started accepting a greater variety of payment methods to cater to new customers and retailers are using new sales channels, such as their contact centre, to sell over the phone or via email.

Speed has been the fundamental requirement for businesses and the simplest and quickest way to start accepting payments is with a plugin for your ecommerce platform.

A plugin is a piece of software code that turbocharges an existing program, enabling it to do something it couldn’t by itself. The much loved Yoast SEO, for example, has been helping Wordpress users improve their search rankings for years. In our case, the plugins we build allow you to start accepting payments through your ecommerce platform. With our payments plugin, we’ve written the code and tested extensively, so all you need to do is:

Depending on the size of your business, chances are you don’t have bountiful development resources, or risk and reconciliation experts on hand. And even if you do, payments may not be at the top of your list of priorities. This is when our plugins can be particularly useful. They provide a quick and simple solution to allow you to start accepting payments while also unlocking all of the features of the Adyen platform such as: risk management, reporting, and reconciliation out of the box. Not only do you benefit from having more time to focus on running your business, you’ll also see noticeable revenue gains. A report by Forrester found that businesses working with Adyen typically noticed a revenue uplift of 1.43%.

As you start to scale up or adapt to new scenarios, your development resources are concentrated on keeping your business running, not adding new tools like a full payments stack. Your ecommerce manager is focusing on optimising your webshop, not internal training. By using a plugin, you take a minimal amount of precious time away from your staff, while allowing them to still use the software they're comfortable with.

Never, has this need to save time while still driving revenue been so relevant as it is during the current crisis. Bagels & Beans is a well-known Dutch cafe chain focused on natural products and socially responsible food. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, they were forced to close all of their stores. Through Adyen’s payment plugin for WooCommerce, and together with their system integrator Pronamic, they quickly set-up an online ordering system enabling them to keep revenue coming in and their loyal customers caffeinated.

Keeping up with the new ways people pay can be a full time job, from the latest payment methods, to new sales channels like contextual commerce. You don't have the time to constantly research ways to accept new payment methods as they arise. We'll shoulder that responsibility, leaving you to merely update your plugin with each release, so you can start accepting payments via Google Pay™️, Klarna, WeChat Pay and whatever may come next.

There’s also things you may not think of, and won’t have to. Accepting payments can be a complicated business. For example, banks are very specific about the information required for a transaction to be approved and how that information is sent. This is something you may not consider, and shouldn’t have to. We’re in constant communication with the banks to ensure the Adyen platform complies and is updated when changes to these requirements occur. And as we stay up to date, you will too.

When you think about payments, the first thing that probably comes to mind is the big "pay" button on a checkout page, but increasing conversions requires finite improvements to every step of the checkout flow to make it as smooth as possible for your customers. An intuitive checkout involves factors such as: device responsiveness, geo localisation, dynamically offering payment methods, and recognising returning shoppers all working together to increase the chances of an authorisation. Data driven risk management enables you to set risk rules specific to your business and uses machine learning in order to let in real shoppers and block fraudsters.

Lancaster, the world famous French leather goods retailer, recently migrated to Magento 2, and integrated their ecommerce platform with Adyen through our plugin. Their objective was to put the customer at the heart of their site redesign and make it as simple as possible for them to make purchases. Despite the challenges they succeeded in drastically reducing cart abandonment.

53% of shoppers have made an online purchase with a retailer in another country. If you want to be one of those retailers and international expansion is on your radar, you’ll be able to do it with ease. Once you’re on the Adyen platform, you can add new payment methods at the click of a button, meaning your customers can pay the way they like, no matter where in the world they are. You’ll be able to welcome new shoppers from San Francisco, Stockholm, Singapore and everywhere in between.

Thinking about opening a pop-up store or a full blown physical outlet in the future? With Adyen, you can sell in-store using the terminal API feature integrated into our plugins. You’ll have one overview of all your payments allowing you to create a consistent experience across all of your sales channels.

We build plugins so you can explore the full potential of your existing partnerships and quickly integrate into our industry leading payments platform. We adopt a proactive approach; talking with system integrators, keeping a close eye on the market, doing thorough research and then choosing partners that we think we’ll be most compatible with. To date, we’ve built plugins for some of the largest ecommerce platforms:

Technology should be there to help you reach your business goals, be they efficient operations, driving change, saving time and money, or quickly adapting to market demands. In these times, and in all the times to come, choosing the right partners to anchor your business is fundamental. The right platform can provide the solid foundations on which your business can survive, thrive, and flourish into the future.