(Beta) Accepting Payments with Stripe's Universal Payment Element

Use Stripe's Universal Payment Element to intelligently present 25+ payment methods to your customers.

Overview

Whether you want to improve conversion in your domestic market or expand globally, surfacing relevant payment methods to your customers is key. Here’s what's new with the Stripe Universal Payment Element (Beta): 

• Automatic input collection: The Payment Element automatically adjusts to collect input fields based on the payment method and country (e.g. full billing address collection for SEPA Direct Debit).
• Dynamic sorting and filtering: The order in which payment methods are displayed adapts to your customer’s device and location to optimize for conversion. Payment methods are also filtered to show only those supported by your customer’s local currency.
• Turn on payment methods instantly: You can turn new payment methods on and off directly from the Dashboard without having to request a new payment method.

Get Started

In order to enable the updated Stripe integration, first go to your Settings -> Payments. 

There will be a Stripe Elements icon, with the options for "Elements" and "Standard" at the top. This will be set to "Standard" by default, meaning that you will need to select "Elements" to enable Stripe Universal Payment Elements. After that, you'll be able to configure your available payment methods. 

Enabling Payment Methods

Once enabled, all of the available payment methods from your Stripe Dashboard will appear with options to enable/disable. Each payment method has an additional "Status" and "Recurring" column associated with it.

1. "Status" reflects whether or not the payment method has been activated in your Stripe account.
2. "Recurring" displays whether or not a payment method supports subscriptions.

You may have to refresh/resync your available payment methods after enabling them in Stripe - you can do that by clicking "Refresh Payment Methods" here:

Here's a list of the payment methods that are generally available once enabled. If you don't see a specific payment method available you may have to enable it from your Stripe Dashboard or contact Stripe directly.

Available Payment Methods:

Business Use Cases:

For businesses who primarily accept only Credit Card or Bank Transfer, the amount of new available payment methods can be overwhelming. To help better understand which payment methods are relevant to your business, Stripe has created this graph which groups available payment methods by business use case.

Source: A guide to payment methods - Stripe

Reduce Payment Fees with Surcharges and Fees

We've extended the ability to add surcharges and fees to this update. This allows certain businesses to offset processing fees or incentivize lower cost payment methods like Bank Transfers. 

Three fields are available when configuring surcharges: "Fee label", "Surcharge ($)" and "Surcharge (%)". 

1. Fee label: Enter the text or name of the fee that will display in your invoice subtotal. i.e. "Credit Card Processing Fee" or "ACH Discount".
2. Surcharge ($): Allows you to enter a fixed amount. Use negative values to offer a discount.

   1. i.e. $5.00 or -$10.00

3. Surcharge (%): Allows you to enter a percentage. Use negative values to offer a discount. 

   1. i.e. 3.90% or -0.50%

Saving Your Changes

Make sure to save your changes before leaving the page. Click the "Save" button at the bottom of your payment method table.

Important Notes:

Subscriptions are not currently supported, but will be soon. 

If you have multiple Stripe accounts connected to different templates, this integration does not support this feature yet. 

Payment methods may need to be activated in Stripe before using them with Paycove. Make sure to check the "Status" column to see if it's "Active" and refresh the payment methods if it has already been activated in Stripe, but still says "Unrequested" in Paycove.