By default Ghost supports payments from members via Credit Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Now, with the Additional Payment Methods (beta), you’ll be able to offer your members the option to checkout via CashApp, iDEAL, Wechat, Revolut, AmazonPay, Direct Debit, ACH, and a long list of other payment methods supported by Stripe.
Why set up additional payment methods
Different payment methods are popular in different parts of the world. In the US it's common to pay for things online with a credit card. In The Netherlands almost nobody uses credit cards, people there prefer iDEAL, a payment system that connects directly to their bank account. In China, AliPay and WeChat Pay are much more popular payment methods than any other.
Unsurprisingly, when a site supports the payment method their customers are most accustomed to and comfortable with, their conversion rates tend to be much higher.
If your audience is predominantly based in a specific region, you will likely want to make sure you support that region's most popular payment methods.
If your audience is international, you may want to consider supporting a wide range of payment methods to appeal to different demographics.
Why a beta?
While we’ve done our best to test and iron out all the bugs, the number of payment method setups you can achieve creates a long tail of different cases. So, we’ve been taking a better safe than sorry approach.
So far, we’ve had over 300 publishers turn on the beta and setup the payment methods that make sense for their audience. Now, after a few months of finding and fixing all the little nuances that have surfaced, we’re ready (and confident) to welcome anyone interested in trying it out.
How to get access
The setup involves changes both in Ghost and Stripe, so we’ve written up a helpful guide to walk you through the process:
Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.