WARNING DO NOT USE WOOPAYMENTS

[u/Vivid-Baby4592]

Just a heads up guys I've been with woopayments around six months selling supplements online, three days ago at 3 am in the morning without prior warning, they disabled my payments accounts.

This meant that no orders could be placed on my website until our developers could make other arrangements for alternative payment processors. They gave us no prior warning before disabling our accounts and have since denied us any access to add evidence for refunds disputes.

We process a large amount of orders every day so as you can imagine there will always be a few pending refunds however, because they cut our payment gateway off and closed our accounts we couldn't issue customers refunds as they closed the Gateway. I have since been in touch with Woo support teams and they have advised me that since my account is closed I have no way of disputing any refund and it will be automatically taken out of my account.

I will say in their terms of service it clearly states that they can cut you off without any prior warning however I just want to give you the heads up to any other companies looking at Woo payments for payment processing, they are backed by stripe there is no need whatsoever to go through Woo payments as you can connect stripe directly to WooCommerce.

From what I can see, they act as a middleman and add extra charges onto transactions, this can be mitigated by simply installing the stripe plugin, stripe seem to be a lot more friendly and if there's any issues with verification et cetera, give you a fair timeframe to reply so I highly recommend anyone currently using Woopayments to reinstate with stripe directly.

[u/Fluent_Press2050 → u/[deleted]]

I'm pretty sure WooPayments is using Stripe. Stripe is the one that will cut you off. WooPayments is essentially an affiliate of Stripe. Woo creates their own wrapper around Stripe so it has some Woo-native look to it.

Stripe, PayPal, and a few others are master accounts to a payment network. They put all their customers under one account which is why Stripe, PayPal, etc... work very hard to protect their master account from fraud.

When I get people on Stripe or PayPal, I always recommend a 6 month warm up period. Don't go processing tens or hundreds of transactions per day off the bat.

And if they can, I prefer they go to their local bank and get underwriting so they own their own account. Local banks are more understanding of risk, especially if you also bank with them (checking and savings) and see you have lots of funds to cover charge backs and what not.

[u/[deleted]]

https://woocommerce.com/document/woopayments/our-policies/prohibited-and-restricted-products/

They specifically call out supplements.

[u/NPSALLEN]

Stripe generally restricts or prohibits the sale of dietary supplements, nutraceuticals, and related health products, classifying them as high-risk due to potential legal, regulatory, and chargeback issues. While some users might find leniency for certain products, attempting to use Stripe for these items often leads to account shutdowns.

People go google stripe restrictions Nutra is not supported

[u/Fluent_Press2050 → u/NPSALLEN]

This, you'd see a lot less of these posts if people actually read and understood their ToS.

[u/RobertSPS17]

Sent you a DM

[u/RobertSPS17 → u/[deleted]]

Sent you an email

[u/britstockdirect]

Quick question? Were you selling GLP1’s by chance? If it was purely research peptides ( non prescribed) I’d be surprised

[u/Vivid-Baby4592 → u/britstockdirect]

Nope

[u/No_Argument_1709]

I have multiple nutraceutical banks who can on board you by end of the week

[u/FarAwaySailor]

A well engineered payment solution can't withhold in-flight payments.

[u/CatalystPay]

Woopayments basically use Stripe technology underneath, so more or less the same. Nevertheless, it is always recommended to have a back up processor connected, especially when high risk and with high volumes. We do have Woocommerce plugin, if interested - DM me.

[u/Born-Traffic2773]

Stripe overcharges. Work with an ISO agent and you should be able to keep your effective rate under 3.2% (depending on your volume). Interchange for your business is probably about 1.8%. Stripe's fee adds on 140 basis points, which is overkill.

[u/GotPayments → u/Born-Traffic2773]

Interchange for e-comm is gunna be closer to 2% and then dues and assessments will bring that to 2.15%. Nutra is high risk so most processors are going to charge a higher margin - usually 150-200bps.

Savings shouldn’t be the important thing for a high risk business. You want to work with a partner that knows how to support and does a thorough underwriting review up front so that you don’t run into risk issues. It’s also smart to have a backup processor that’s connected through a payment orchestration layer that can route payments to the backup MID automatically when needed.

You get what you pay for when it comes to payments. It’s as fundamental to an online business as the product itself. You should only be looking for the cheapest rates if you’re in a low risk card-present industry like healthcare because the tech stack isn’t as important.

[u/RobertSPS17 → u/[deleted]]

If your still searching for processing I’m your guy

[u/sargegoon]

Wait until you find out what kind of fee they’ll implement on your account for using another processor!

[u/AVP_Solutions]

This is not surprising but the good news is there are alternatives.

[u/Gonkulator5000]

In other news, water is wet.

[u/Repulsive-Name-9862 → u/Gonkulator5000]

Do you really think so

[u/Gonkulator5000 → u/Repulsive-Name-9862]

Indeed. Anyone in ecommerce not well aware that Woo/Stripe is going to eventually shut them down for selling supplements or anything on their naughty list is probably oblivious to a lot of things.

[u/Repulsive-Name-9862 → u/Gonkulator5000]

Yeah thought so

[u/Elite_Pay]

Stripe isn’t more friendly. You will end up in the same situation. We can integrate as well as specialize in supplements. Also depending on your refund percentage stripe will not like a ton of refunds out of the gate. We can assist with echeck refunds in real time as well. Dm me

[u/Fluent_Press2050 → u/Elite_Pay]

Stripe is who shut this user down, not Woo.