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This guide covers taking payments on nopCommerce 4.90 and 5.00: what’s in the download, how payment plugins work, what to check before installing one, and the change in 5.00 that affects stores still using the Manual method.
What’s included in nopCommerce
- PayPal Commerce: PayPal’s current checkout, with buttons, hosted card fields and wallets. Most stores can take cards with it alone.
- Check / money order: an offline method for bank transfer, cheque or invoice payment. You set the instructions customers see and an optional fee, and mark orders as paid yourself.
Everything else is a plugin. B2B stores that invoice customers often add a purchase order or “pay on account” method restricted to certain customer roles.
PayPal Commerce in nopCommerce
The bundled PayPal Commerce plugin is more than a PayPal button. Its settings cover:
- PayPal and Pay Later buttons on the cart, product page or payment step
- Card fields hosted by PayPal, so card numbers don’t touch your server
- Apple Pay, Google Pay and other local payment methods PayPal offers in the customer’s country
- Capture immediately, or authorise now and capture when you ship
- Saved payment methods for returning customers (vaulting)
- Shipment tracking numbers sent to PayPal, which helps with disputes
- A sandbox mode for testing with PayPal’s test accounts
Connect it to your PayPal business account from its configuration page, or enter the client ID and secret by hand. Which wallets and local methods appear depends on PayPal’s support in your country and the customer’s.
Adding Stripe, Klarna and other providers
Most major payment providers have nopCommerce plugins on the nopCommerce Marketplace (opens in a new tab), published by the provider itself or by a plugin vendor. Common choices:
- Cards and wallets: Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, Square, Authorize.net.
- Buy now, pay later: Klarna, Afterpay / Clearpay, Affirm.
- European local methods: Mollie, which covers iDEAL, Bancontact, SEPA and others.
- Regional gateways: Razorpay in India, and local banks’ gateways in many countries.
When the provider publishes its own plugin, prefer it: the provider keeps it in step with its API. If no plugin exists for your provider or version, a payment plugin is a well-defined piece of custom work.
How nopCommerce payment plugins work
Every payment plugin declares one of three flow types:
| Type | How it works | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | The customer enters payment details on your checkout page, usually in fields hosted by the provider. | Card fields, saved cards |
| Redirection | After confirming the order, the customer is sent to the provider’s page and returns when done. | Hosted payment pages, many bank and wallet methods |
| Button | The customer pays with the provider’s own button, often before reaching the payment step. | PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay buttons |
Each plugin also says what it supports after the order is placed: capture, full refund, partial refund, void and recurring payments. Those buttons appear on the admin order page only when the plugin supports them. A plugin without refund support means refunds are made in the provider’s dashboard and recorded in nopCommerce by hand.
How to choose a payment plugin
- Has a build for your exact nopCommerce version, ideally published or endorsed by the provider
- Uses hosted fields, a hosted page or wallet buttons, so card data stays with the provider
- Supports refunds and partial refunds from the nopCommerce order page, and capture if you ship later
- Confirms payment through the provider’s webhooks or notifications, not only the customer’s return to your site
- Supports 3-D Secure / Strong Customer Authentication if you sell in Europe or the UK
- Handles the currencies you sell in, and settles to your bank in the currency you need
- Supports recurring payments if you sell subscriptions
Setting up a payment method
- Install the plugin in Configuration → Local plugins and restart; see our plugin install steps.
- Open its configuration page, turn on the sandbox or test mode, and enter the provider’s test keys.
- Activate it in Configuration → Payment methods (tick Is active) and set its display order.
- Use Payment restrictions on the same page to hide it in countries where it shouldn’t appear.
- Place test orders: a success, a declined card, a cancelled redirect, a refund and, if used, a capture after shipping.
- Switch to live keys and place one small real order.
nopCommerce’s payment settings also let you skip the payment method step when only one method is available, show payment method descriptions, skip the payment info step for redirection methods, and let customers retry an unpaid order.
Recurring payments and subscriptions
Any product can be marked as recurring, with a cycle such as every month and a total number of payments. How renewals are charged depends on the payment plugin, which declares one of three modes:
- Not supported: the plugin can’t be used for recurring products.
- Manual: nopCommerce triggers each renewal and the plugin charges the saved payment method.
- Automatic: the provider runs the schedule and charges the customer itself.
Recurring payments are listed under Sales → Recurring payments, where they can be cancelled. A setting can cancel them automatically after a failed payment.
Manual payments are gone in nopCommerce 5.00
Up to 4.90, nopCommerce included a Manual payment method that collected card numbers in checkout and stored them in the database for staff to charge later. nopCommerce 5.00 no longer includes it.
Storing card numbers puts a store under the heaviest PCI DSS requirements, and storing the security code (CVV) after authorisation isn’t allowed at all. If your 4.90 store uses Manual payments, move to a provider with hosted fields before upgrading, and remove stored card data from old orders. The free StorePulse plugin counts orders with stored card details (without reading them) as part of its 5.00 upgrade check. Our guide to the Manual method’s removal covers replacements and clearing old card data.
Payment plugins that save extra details on an order, such as a payment reference, are affected in another way: 5.00 splits the email token that shows them into four. See the %Order.CustomValues% replacement.
Frequently asked questions
Which payment methods does nopCommerce support?
nopCommerce 5.00 includes PayPal Commerce, which covers PayPal, Pay Later, hosted card fields, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and Check / money order for offline payment. Other providers, such as Stripe, Klarna, Mollie, Adyen or regional gateways, are added with a payment plugin.
Does nopCommerce support Stripe?
Not in the download. Stripe plugins for nopCommerce are available on the nopCommerce Marketplace. Check that the plugin uses Stripe’s hosted payment elements, supports refunds, and has a build for your version.
How do I add a payment method in nopCommerce?
Install the payment plugin in Configuration → Local plugins, configure it with the provider’s keys, then activate it in Configuration → Payment methods. Use Payment restrictions on the same page to hide it in countries where it shouldn’t appear.
Can I charge a fee for a payment method?
Yes, if the plugin supports it: each payment method can add its own handling fee to the order, and many plugins let you set a fixed amount or a percentage. Check local rules first, because surcharges for card payments are not allowed everywhere.
Why was the Manual payment method removed?
nopCommerce 5.00 no longer ships Payments.Manual, which stored card details in the store’s database for manual processing. Storing card data puts the store under the heaviest PCI requirements, and storing CVV codes is never allowed. Use a provider’s hosted fields or pages instead.
Does nopCommerce support subscriptions?
Yes. Products can be recurring, with a cycle length and number of payments. Whether the renewals are charged automatically depends on the payment plugin: some let the provider run the schedule, some let nopCommerce trigger each payment, and some don’t support recurring payments at all.
Next steps
If PayPal Commerce covers your markets, start there. If you need another provider, a B2B payment method, or a plugin for a gateway that has none, send us the provider and your nopCommerce version. When the rules go beyond one plugin, such as payment methods by customer group or order value, that is a custom nopCommerce checkout.