Simple Payments lets you create and embed credit and debit card payment buttons on your WordPress.com and Jetpack-enabled sites with minimal setup. The feature is available to Premium and Business plan subscribers on WordPress.com and on Premium and Professional plans for Jetpack sites running version 5.2 or higher.

Create Your First Button

To add a Simple Payments button, go to My Sites and click on Pages → Add. You can also add a Simple Payment button to existing Posts or Pages by editing them in the Visual Editor.

In the toolbar, click the “⊕ Add” and then the option to add a Payment Button will appear like in the example below:

If this is your first button you will see the create new button form:

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Button Details

Adding an Image

You can click Add an Image or drag and drop an image onto the form to add an image to your button. After adding the image you will be see the image editing tools:

Click Done when you are ready to upload the image. After the image finishes uploading you can make additional edits to the image by clicking the pencil icon. To change the image click the ✕ on the top right of the current image and add a new one.

Adding Details

Fill in the Name, Description, and Price for the item you are selling. You can set the currency by clicking the currency button to the left of the Price input:

These are the currencies supported by our PayPal integration.

The toggle below Price enables the multiples option. If enabled the button will show an input field that allows people to purchase more than one item at at time.

Payments captured by your new button will be paid out to the email address you add to the button. Double check the email address you entered. Payments are fulfilled by PayPal but you don’t need an existing account to start collecting payments on your site. Any email address that you have access to will work to get started.

When you are ready click Insert. This will embed your new button into your Post or Page.

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Updating and Adding Buttons

Now that you have your first button created you can make changes or insert it into more Posts and Pages.

To update or add Simple Payments button, go to My Sites and click on Pages → Add or by opening an existing Post or Page in the Visual Editor.

In the toolbar, click the ⌄ next to the ⊕ symbol, and then the option to add a payment button. You will now see a list of all the buttons you have created:

Adding Buttons

You can add an existing button to any Post or Page by selecting any button in the list and clicking Insert:

Or you can add a new button by clicking Add New in the top right corner of the list.

Deleting Buttons

You can delete buttons from the Simple Payments button list. Click the ellipsis on the far right side of the button you want to delete:

Clicking the trash can will disable the button from all Posts and Pages immediately. Also, the Simple Payments button will no longer be displayed anywhere on the site.

Please note that WordPress.com pages are cached to provide your site visitors a great web experience. Cached pages can sometimes show old content which means a deleted Simple Payments button might still appear on a Post or Page. This should only happen for a few minutes however, updating a Post or Page will remove any deleted buttons immediately from that Post or Page.

You can also remove a button from a single Post or Page. Open the Post or Page you want to remove the button from in the Visual Editor. Click on the Simple Payment button you want removed:

Click the ✕ to remove the button and update the Post or Page to save your changes.

Editing Buttons

You can edit any existing button from the ellipsis menu in the button list:

or from clicking an embedded button in the Visual Editor:

Any applied changes will appear everywhere the button is displayed on the site.

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Adding a Widget

On WordPress.com and Jetpack 6.3 or above, you can add a quick payment option to any widgetized area (sidebar, footer, etc.) on your WordPress site.

Here’s an example from a footer area:

To add a widget, go to My Sites and click on Customize to load the site customizer. From the Customizer menu, click on Widgets and then select the area of your site where you’d like the widget to appear.

At the bottom of this menu, click the Add Widget button, and look for Simple Payments in the list.

You can then choose which product to display in the widget. If you don’t have any products yet, you can create one right inside the widget by clicking Add New.

For each new product, you can add everything you can on a standalone Simple Payment Button, including a photo, description, and price.

Once one or more products have been created and saved via the Customizer, you can switch between them when adding a new widget or payment button. Just choose from the right button in the list when you’re setting up and you’re good to go!

After selecting a product, you can change the widget options, reorder it, and see how it will look on the page. Once you’re happy with how it looks, click Publish at the top of the Customizer sidebar to save your site layout with the new widget.

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Collecting Payments

Please note that your site must be public before you can collect payments. You are able to create and add buttons but you will not be able to collect payments on a private site.

When a visitor to your site clicks the pay with PayPal button on any of your Simple Payment buttons, a new window will open that will take them through the PayPal checkout. If you have a Premier or Business PayPal account, they will have the option to pay you from their PayPal account or simply use a credit or debit card to complete the purchase.

All payments are credited to the PayPal account linked to the email address used in the button. For every purchase PayPal will send a confirmation email with the purchasers information to this email address. The purchaser will also receive an email from PayPal as a receipt for the purchase.

If the email you use is not linked to an existing PayPal account, you will receive an email from PayPal with information about claiming any collected payments. This email is sent after you collect your first payment. Be sure to check that PayPal supports collecting online payments in your region. You will need Business Account support which you can determine for your country by following PayPal’s online support.

WordPress.com will also send an email for each purchase. This email will be sent to the user’s email who created the button. You can also expect a monthly report for all your Simple Payment buttons. This email is sent to the site plan owner.

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Styling The Payments Button

For information on how to style aspects of the button, please see our Simple Payments styling page.

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The "Making Of" Simple Payments

To learn about how this feature came to be, read our announcement post here.