How to accept payments on your website

  • A payment link needs no website at all
  • A gateway is usually the right answer
  • You almost never handle card numbers yourself

Four routes, and how to tell which one you need

Taking money online is a smaller job than most people expect and a bigger one than the "add a buy button" guides suggest. This page covers the four ways to do it, what each costs, and the one security rule that decides where you can host it.

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The four ways to take money online

In order of how much work each one is to set up.

Pick the smallest one that does the job

A payment link

Your provider generates a URL or a QR code and you send it by email or message. No website required, nothing to integrate, and it is the fastest way to take a one-off payment today.

A hosted checkout button

A snippet you paste into your page. The customer is handed to the provider to pay and sent back afterwards. Card details never touch your site, which removes most of your compliance burden.

A full gateway integration

Your site talks to the provider through an API, so the checkout stays on your domain and you control the experience. This is what a real store needs and it is a developer job.

A platform that includes it

WooCommerce, Shopify or a booking plugin bundle the cart, the checkout and the provider together. Less control, far less to build, and usually the right answer for a first store.

What it costs and what you need first

The parts people discover after they have started.

Four things to settle before you build

Fees are per transaction

Providers charge a percentage plus a small fixed amount per successful payment, with international cards costing more than domestic ones. Compare on the rate for the cards your customers actually use, not the headline.

You need a business identity

Every provider verifies who you are before releasing funds - a registered business or sole trader identity, a bank account in the same name, and usually tax registration. Start this early; it is the slow part.

Payouts are not instant

Money typically settles to your bank a few working days after the payment. Plan for the gap, particularly if you pay suppliers on receipt of an order.

An SSL certificate is mandatory

A page that collects any payment detail must be served over HTTPS, and browsers now mark it unsafe otherwise. Every ElySpace plan includes a free SSL certificate, so this is a setting rather than a purchase.

Accepting payments: common questions

Pick the simplest of four routes that does your job. A payment link needs no website at all and works today. A hosted checkout button is a snippet you paste in, where the customer pays on the provider's page. A full gateway integration keeps the checkout on your own domain and needs a developer. A platform like WooCommerce bundles all of it together. For a first store the platform route is usually right.

If card details never touch your server - which is the case with payment links, hosted checkout buttons and most platform integrations - your obligation is small and your provider handles the hard part. It becomes a serious undertaking only if you capture or store card numbers yourself, which almost no small business should do. Choosing a hosted checkout is how you avoid the question.

Expect a percentage of each transaction plus a small fixed fee, charged only on successful payments, with international and premium cards costing more than domestic ones. Most providers have no monthly fee at small volumes. The costs that catch people out are currency conversion and chargeback fees, so read those two lines before you choose.

Yes. A payment link or QR code from your provider takes a one-off payment with no website, no cart and no checkout - you send it by email, message or invoice. It is the right answer for services, deposits and invoicing, and many businesses never need anything more than this.

For hosted checkouts and payment links, no - any hosting with a valid SSL certificate will do, and every ElySpace plan includes one. A real store is different: carts and checkouts are database-heavy and fail under load in a way a brochure site does not, so e-commerce hosting gives you more PHP workers and memory for the same traffic.

The technical part is usually under a day, and often under an hour for a payment link or hosted button. The slow part is verification: providers confirm your business identity, your bank account and your tax registration before releasing funds, which commonly takes several working days. Start that first and build while you wait.

Where to go next

Hosting for a store, and the pieces around it.

See e-commerce hosting plans