Magento 2 Wiki

Magento 2 Payment Methods and Options

Magento 2 can support a wide selection of payment methods, gateways and payment services. By default, Magento 2 has 5 default payment methods, plus, out of the box, the platform lets you accept payments using two third-party services PayPal and Authorize.net. Read on to learn more about it.

Let's start with some basic definitions.

Payment Method - it's a way a customer pays for a products/service in your Magento 2 store. Payment methods can be either internal or external.

To enable and configure one of the basic payment methods, jump to

Admin -> Stores -> Configuration -> Sales -> Payment Methods

Magento 2 payment methods

Magento offers the following basic payment methods:

Check/money order
Bank Transfer
Cash on delivery
Purchase Order
Zero Subtotal Checkout

This Magento 2 payment methods article will tell you everything about that.

Magento 2 Payment gateways

Payment Gateway is a third-party service provider that automates payment transactions between an online store and customers.

Out of the box, Magento 2 supports PayPal and Authorize.net. To activate them, you just need to enter your personal data received from the payment provider.

In addition to the above listed providers, you can integrate any other payment gateway that corresponds to all your business needs. You can either find such a solution on a new Magento Marketplace or hire a Magento agency to develop a custom solution.

Here are some examples of the most popular gateways by countries (besides PayPal and Authorize.net):

Magento payment options

Accepting Credit Card Payment

When it comes to accepting credit card payment in a Magento 2 site, you can use:

Saved Credit Card payment method
PayPal
Authorize.net

The Saved Credit Card Method

Basically, this method lets customers save credit details locally, to the DB.

The Saved Credit Card method was not designed to interact with gateways, it's mainly used for testing the checkout process while developing and setting up a website.

Hence, in case you are using this payment method with customers' credit cards on a live site, you should be aware that their credit card info is not as secure as it should be.

PayPal

With 179 million active accounts worldwide, 100 available currencies and 203 markets, PayPal became one of the most popular and leading payment processors nowadays.

As a Magento store owner, you can apply PayPal Payments (Standard, Advanced or Pro) and Express Checkout to accept credit card payment.

PayPal Payments Standard is the easiest way to accept online payments as you just add a checkout button to your site. It’s completely free of charge and allows you to accept credit cards & PayPal.   The only drawback, PayPal Standard doesn’t allow your customers to complete checkout on your site. Instead, customers will be redirected to PayPal to complete their payment.

More information about Paypal configuration for Magento 2.

PayPal Express Checkout is a little bit more complicated, as it requires either a business or premier account. Customers just hit “Checkout with PayPal” button and complete the payment (from PayPal) with 3 easy steps.

What’s more, Magento supports recurring profiles for the products paid with PayPal Express Checkout.

Authorize.net

Authorize.net is one of the most popular onsite payment gateways that is included into Magento 2 by default.

Generally, it allows customers finish the checkout process without leaving a website. All customers' information is transfer through a security gateway.

This feature significantly improves customers' shopping experience, as it lets them save time and checkout easily.