To process payments with PayWhirl, you need to connect to a LIVE payment gateway and/or merchant account. The gateway works like a vault to securely store your customer's payment information for future charges. 

By default, all PayWhirl accounts come connected to our PayWhirl Test Gateway, but it's just for simulation/testing purposes. Test customers cannot be converted into "live" accounts or switched to a live payment gateway. 

To charge your customers and process real money, you have to connect to a LIVE payment gateway. If you'd like to use a gateway other than Stripe, you must be on a monthly paid plan. See this article for more pricing details.

Available Payment Gateways:

*PayPal owns Braintree, to use PayPal as your payment gateway you must create a Braintree account. 

Please note that your payment gateway's transaction fees still apply and are separate from PayWhirl transaction fees.

To connect to a LIVE gateway to PayWhirl please navigate to Main Menu > Payment Gateways in your account. Once there, you will see the available gateways available on your specific plan level. 

Click the "Setup Gateway" button on the gateway you want to connect. 

Note: If you are on our FREE monthly "Starter" plan you will need to upgrade to access other gateways. Stripe and Square are the only gateways supported on Starter at this time.

By default, widgets you set up will be connected to our test gateway. To make the switch to a live gateway go to the Manage Widgets page and click the name of the widget you want to connect to your live gateway.

Next, click on the advanced settings link in your widget settings and select the new live gateway from the dropdown menu.​

Finally, click on Customer Portal in the main navigation bar to set your Portal Registration (if enabled) to use your live payment gateway.

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Please let us know if you have any questions!

Sincerely,

The PayWhirl Team
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