WP Simple Pay Pro Now Supports SCA & New Stripe Checkout

WP Simple Pay just released an exciting update to their Stripe payments plugin for WordPress. Version 3.6 includes many changes to fully support Stripe’s updates for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and the new Stripe Checkout.

Get details about why SCA is important, how SCA affects payments on your WordPress sites, and how the new Stripe Checkout differs from the now “legacy” version.

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SCA

Effective as of September 14, 2019, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is a requirement set out in the new European regulation called PSD2 to protect both online merchants and customers. It requires merchants to use two methods of verification to authenticate a customer’s identity including a form of two-factor authentication. That way fraud will be reduced and online payments will be more secure. Without this additional authentication, European banks can decline “customer-initiated” online payments.

For online purchases with a debit or credit card, Strong Customer Authentication will apply to transactions where both the company of the online merchant and the cardholder’s bank are located in the European Economic Area (EEA).

For subscriptions, SCA will apply to the first payment only as recurring direct debits or subscriptions are considered “merchant-initiated” – unless there is a change in the amount of the recurring payment. Also low-value transactions not exceeding €30 will generally be exempt from this requirement.

So how does this affect WP Simple Pay? They are now using the new Payment Intents API along with the latest 3D Secure authentication standards and not Stripe’s Charges API anymore. No action is required to enable the new 3D Secure features. The current Stripe Checkout modal will no longer be supported.

Good news, all this does not affect any renewal payments for existing recurring subscriptions. You just have to enable customer emails to be sent for authorization. In your Stripe dashboard, simply head over to Settings > Billing > Subscriptions > Customer Emails.

New Stripe Checkout

In your payment forms you now have the option to use the new Stripe Checkout with 3D Secure automatically being included. The “legacy” Stripe Checkout overlay was removed to ensure that you can accept all card payments.

All WP Simple Pay forms using Stripe Checkout will continue to work as normal. The payment flow, however, will look a bit different than before. Customers will now be directed off-site to a fully Stripe-hosted payment page. After that they will be directed back to your WordPress site to show a payment confirmation.

You can still use the modal payment form by switching to the Overlay form display option. This uses Stripe Elements to provide real-time validation and securely collect payment details.

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