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:

Stripe (All plans, including starter)
Square.com (All plans, including starter)
Authorize.net (Monthly paid plans only)
Braintree (Monthly paid plans only)
PayPal* (Monthly paid plans only)
Spreedly Vault (Monthly paid plans only, additional fees apply)

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

*Spreedly Vault Gateways - Additional PayWhirl $50/Month and 15-cent transaction fees apply.

Elavon
Heartland
Moneris
NMI
SagePay

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

Connecting to a Featured Gateway

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.

Connecting to a Spreedly Vault Gateway

To connect your account with one of our supported Spreedly vault gateways please navigate to Main Menu > Payment Gateways in your account.

From the gateways page, scroll down and view the "Spreedly Vault Gateways"

Click the "Setup Gateway" button on the gateway you'd like to connect. You will be asked to agree to the Spreedly terms of service and accept the additional PayWhirl fees of $50 per month and 15-cent transaction fees.

Suppose you are on our PayWhirl Pro plan ($49/month) and you want to use the NMI gateway. The total charged by PayWhirl would be $99 per month and 2.0% + $0.15 per transaction. The NMI (or other gateway) fees still apply and are separate.

Please keep in mind that any existing widget(s) in your account will still be connected to the PayWhirl Test Gateway, which comes pre-installed by default.

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.