Description

The Pay Advantage WordPress plugin adds payment methods to your WordPress or WooCommerce checkout, giving your customers the option to pay by credit card, PayID, or BPAY. The plugin supports both the traditional and block editor, so you can install it whichever way suits your site. Please make sure you're using the latest version of the plugin.

Connecting to your account

Step 1. Install & Activate the Plugin

Install the plugin from your Wordpress admin page by searching and clicking the Install Now button.

Step 2. Install & Activate the Plugin

Before you start using the Pay Advantage Wordpress plugin on your site, it is a good idea to test and make sure everything is working the way you want it to. To do this you'll need to create and use a Sandbox account in Pay Advantage.

Login to your Pay Advantage account. On the dashboard menu, click the test button and it will switch you to the test environment. 

Step 3. Connect to the Sandbox environment for testing

In your WordPress admin area go to Settings and then Pay Advantage. By default the selector for API Environment should be on Sandbox, if it isn't, change it.

Click the Connect button and login to Pay Advantage with your Sandbox account username and password. Using a sandbox account lets you test taking payments without having to use real card data.

Finish connecting the app to your Pay Advantage account and you can begin testing the widgets on your Wordpress website. The connection name is a reference you can set to distinguish if you have multiple Wordpress sites connected to one Pay Advantage account.

Step 4. Connect to WooCommerce

Go to the payments section in WooCommerce. Once you have completed the initial set up of WooCommerce you are able to select the Get Paid option to configure Pay Advantage as your payment portal.

Pay Advantage will appear in the list of Payment Providers — click Enable to activate it. Once enabled, Pay Advantage is ready to use with WooCommerce. You'll then need to add the WooCommerce Checkout block to your page.

Next, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Payments and enable the plugin. Click the Manage Pay Advantage Settings button to choose which payment types you want to accept.

Payment portal: When enabled, customers are redirected to your Pay Advantage payment portal when they choose to pay via Pay Advantage. This provides a branded checkout experience and presents the customer with a receipt once payment is complete.

Webhooks: Enabling webhooks keeps WordPress in sync with Pay Advantage payment information. If a customer exits the payment flow while a transaction is still processing, Pay Advantage will still notify WordPress whether the payment succeeded or failed. Webhooks take around 5 minutes to register after you set them up.

NOTE: If you do not see Pay Advantage, you have not enabled the plugin. Go back to step 3 to complete enabling the plugin. 

Step 5. Connect to your live account

When you are finished testing and ready to use your live environment for taking payments, follow the same steps above but ensure the Environment is set to Live.

Click the Connect button and login to Pay Advantage with your accounts username and password. This will let customers and visitors make payments on your Wordpress site and send payment information to Pay Advantage.

Finish connecting the app to your Pay Advantage account and start taking payments.

Widgets and WooCommerce integration

Payment Modes:

The below three payment modes are what your customers will see at checkout. 

Credit Card is enabled by default. If you enable PayID or the Payment Portal, those options will also appear at checkout.

Credit Card and PayID open a pop-up window for the customer to complete payment. This avoids navigating away from your site, but be aware that some browsers may block pop-ups.

Pay Advantage Payment Portal redirects customers to your branded payment portal, where the payment is made directly through Pay Advantage. A receipt is shown once payment is complete, and if the customer clicks "Back to portal", they'll be returned to the payment summary on your WordPress site.

Register new customers and generate a BPAY reference

This is particularly useful if you want to add an easy way for your customer's to generate BPAY details for themselves, so that they can send you payments.

This option is enabled via the use of a WordPress widget. You can implement this widget on any widget area, post or page. You won't need much knowledge of widgets to get this working on your site, but if you want more information please see this article.

When added to the site, the customer will see a widget like this (styled according to your theme):

Once they fill the form and press "Register", they will be shown something similar to this:

From here they will be able to use the Biller Code and Ref numbers to make payments to you. They will also be sent an email with their BPAY details.

To add the widget to your WordPress website Click "Settings → Pay Advantage". Ensure that you are connected, and choose the widget you want to turn on.

You can customise the widget with additional options on this page. Press "Save Changes". Navigate to "Appearance" → Widgets. Add the widget "Pay Advantage - Generate BPAY Reference" anywhere you like (for example in your sidebar). For instructions on how to use Widgets please see this article. 

You can add an optional Title that will appear above the widget on your page if you would like. 

You can adjust your settings anytime in "Settings → Pay Advantage". You should now be able to see the widget on your page wherever the widget area is visible.

Let customers pay any amount from a credit card 

This option is very useful if you would like to take donations from your website. You can add a widget on your page which allows users to make payments on your website.

To add the widget to your WordPress website:

1. Click "Settings → Pay Advantage". Ensure that you have your API username and password entered in.
2. You can customise the widget with additional options on this page. The description is what will show up on the payment.
3. Press "Save Changes"
4. Navigate to "Appearance" → Widgets
5. Add the widget "Pay Advantage - Take Credit Card Payment" anywhere you like (for example in your sidebar). For instructions on how to use Widgets please see this article. You can add an optional Title that will appear above the widget on your page if you would like.
6. You can adjust your settings anytime in "Settings → Pay Advantage"

You should now be able to see the widget on your page wherever the widget area is visible.

Troubleshooting

The plug-in wont install.

NOTE: Ensure your server php.ini file is configured with the parameter serialize_precision set to -1. This is often accessed through your cPanel server editor. 

serialize_precision = -1

Payment portal redirect returns a 404

After a payment is made via the Payment portal, the user clicks to open the wordpress site and wordpress returns a 404 error. This is due to your permalinks settings. Permalinks cannot be set to plain, otherwise the redirect to wordpress cannot be facilitated. 

I've installed the plugin, but the checkout says "There are no payment methods available"

This errors occurs when your WordPress is using the block editor to create pages. To fix this you will be required to use the short code to display the checkout screen.

Go to the pages section of WordPress and create a new page to host the checkout screen.

Add a block of type shortcode in the blockeditor.

Type the following into the shortcode text section. Then save and load the checkout page and you will see the ability to receive payment via the PayAdvantage plugin. 
 

This error arises when utilizing the block editor in WordPress to create pages. To resolve this issue, it is necessary to use a shortcode block to embed the checkout screen with PayAdvantage as the payment option.

1. Navigate to the WordPress pages section and generate a new page dedicated to hosting the checkout screen.
2. Insert a shortcode block in the block editor.
3. Input the following code into the shortcode text section, then save and load the checkout page. Now you have the capability to accept payments through the PayAdvantage plugin.

[woocommerce_checkout]

WordPress Failures

Any failures encountered by the plug in are logged to the lower section of the Pay Advantage config screen. Located "Settings → Pay Advantage". 

These errors will explain any issues that the plugin is experiencing. This is the a great place to begin troubleshooting.

Steps:

1. Verify the WordPress version and WooCommerce versions are supported by the Pay Advantage plug in. To find supported versions, view the change log on the WordPress plug-in https://wordpress.org/plugins/pay-advantage/#developers
2. Ensure you have the latest version of the plug-in installed https://wordpress.org/plugins/pay-advantage/
3. Verify you are connecting to the right environment. Sandbox is used for testing and Live is used to take customers credit card payments. Review step 3 above.
4. Ensure the php.ini file has the setting: serialize_precision = -1
5. Disable any other plug-ins installed to limit testing to WordPress, WooCommerce and Pay Advantage only. This ensures other 3rd Party plug-ins are not affecting the Pay Advantage plug-in.
6. If disabling the other plugins doesn't work, create a brand new WordPress installation with WooCommerce and Pay Advantage and test in a contained environment.