Modernizing the WooCommerce payments experience: Technical changes ahead

timcrepeau Avatar
timcrepeau

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We’re planning improvements to create a more consistent, intuitive, and flexible payments experience for merchants in WooCommerce. While no immediate changes are required for payment gateway extensions, we want to keep you informed about our roadmap and future plans.

Why we’re modernizing payments and what it means for developers

Merchants have told us that configuring and managing payments in WooCommerce can be complex and inconsistent. To address this, we’re building a more streamlined, standardized payments experience that will benefit both merchants and developers:

For merchants:

  • A consistent interface for configuring all payment solutions.
  • Simpler payment method discovery and setup.
  • More intuitive management experience.
  • Better showcase of available payment options.

For developers:

  • Faster, more reliable settings interface for your customers.
  • Improved discoverability of your payment gateway.
  • Standardized UI patterns that reduce support requests.
  • Future-ready foundation for new features and capabilities.

Like we did with High Performance Order Storage (HPOS), we’re introducing these changes gradually with a feature flag, allowing you to test and see the benefits firsthand while maintaining your existing integration.

Note: We’re improving the main WooCommerce Payments settings page (WooCommerce > Settings > Payments) while keeping individual payment gateway settings pages exactly as they are.

How we’re getting there

1. Modernized settings interface

To deliver a more consistent experience, we’re rebuilding the WooCommerce Settings > Payments page using modern technology:

  • New React-based interface for the core WooCommerce Payments settings page
  • Individual plugin settings pages are not affected by these changes
  • Complete retirement of the classic WooCommerce Payments settings page in WooCommerce 9.9

2.  Improved payment discovery

We’re evolving the Payments navigation to become a comprehensive hub where merchants can:

  • Discover and compare available payment solutions.
  • Access unified gateway configuration.
  • Manage all payment-related settings in one place.

3. Future improvements

As part of our ongoing modernization efforts, we’re also planning additional enhancements:

  • Standardized payment gateway registration patterns.
  • Updated gateway-level information requirements (icons, URLs).
  • Improved sorting and presentation of payment methods.
  • More to come.

Details and timelines for these future improvements will be shared as they are established.

Rollout timeline

We’re taking a phased approach to ensure a smooth transition:

  1. WooCommerce 9.6 (Beta planned for Dec 17): Introduction behind a feature flag, allowing developers and merchants to test and provide feedback.
  2. WooCommerce 9.7: Enabling the new experience for all new stores.
  3. WooCommerce 9.9: Full rollout to all stores and retirement of classic payments settings page.

Review our release calendar for specific dates.

Testing and feedback

Your input during the feature flag phase will be crucial. We’ll focus on:

  • Identifying potential bugs.
  • Ensuring backward compatibility.
  • Addressing technical integration issues.

Where to report issues

Getting updates

Next steps for developers

  • No immediate changes are required for your payment gateway extensions
  • These changes only affect the main WooCommerce Settings > Payments page, not individual plugin settings pages
  • Starting with WooCommerce 9.6 (January 2024), you can test the new interface using a feature flag
  • We’ll provide detailed technical documentation before any future integration updates are needed
  • Stay tuned to the developer blog and newsletter for updates

We’re committed to supporting payment gateway developers through this transition with the information and documentation they’ll need. While these changes optimize the placement of WooPayments and our payment partners, we remain dedicated to maintaining an open ecosystem that benefits all developers and merchants.

Watch this space for regular updates as we approach the WooCommerce 9.6 release.

Keep yourself in the loop!

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12 responses to “Modernizing the WooCommerce payments experience: Technical changes ahead”

  1. Larsen Avatar
    Larsen

    WooCommerce 9.7: Enabling the new experience for all new stores.

    If developers have to change the code completely to REACT code, this timeline seems quite tight!

    Reply
    1. Aaron Avatar
      Aaron

      I agree, there are still some plugins that don’t support HPOS.

      Reply
    2. Brent MacKinnon Avatar
      Brent MacKinnon

      Thanks for your comment, Larsen. I want to clarify that there are no immediate code changes required for existing payment gateway extensions at this time. We’ve specifically designed this modernization with backwards compatibility in mind. While we’re introducing a new React-based interface, this change primarily affects the WooCommerce core admin interface rather than requiring payment gateway developers to rewrite their extensions in React. We’ll provide plenty of notice and detailed documentation when any developer-facing changes are needed in the future.

      Reply
  2. Aaron Avatar
    Aaron

    Will there be any docs for the new changes?

    Reply
    1. Brent MacKinnon Avatar
      Brent MacKinnon

      Hi Aaron – Yes, absolutely! We’ll be providing comprehensive documentation as we define and roll out any changes that require developer action. Right now, we’re in the early stages, but we’ll share detailed technical documentation well before any changes are required. I’d recommend subscribing to the developer newsletter and keeping an eye on the developer blog for updates as we move forward with this modernization effort.

      Reply
      1. Aaron Avatar
        Aaron

        I would have liked to see docs now, this way I can have a look and see what is needed.

        Seems mental to make a post saying get ready to test, but test what and how?

        Reply
        1. Brent MacKinnon Avatar
          Brent MacKinnon

          We’ll have the settings interface available for testing this week, when it’s introduced behind a feature flag in WooCommerce 9.6.

          Reply
  3. Odirlon Avatar
    Odirlon

    Will there be enough time? Wouldn’t it be healthier for stores to make this new version optional, as was done with HPOS? There are still plugins that are not compatible with HPOS.
    I feel like there won’t be enough time for developers to update or for stores to have to choose a new payment partner because their current partner couldn’t adapt.

    Imagine if this goes wrong like it did with the New Product Editor or the WC Admin menu?

    Reply
    1. Brent MacKinnon Avatar
      Brent MacKinnon

      Thanks for raising these concerns. We’re taking a careful approach here – the initial release in 9.6 will be behind a feature flag so everyone can test without affecting live sites. Your existing payment gateways will continue to work as they do today, since we’ve built this with backwards compatibility in mind.
      We’ll have several months of testing and community feedback before the full rollout in 9.9, and we can adjust the timeline if needed. Our main goal is improving things for merchants while keeping the transition smooth for developers.

      Reply
  4. Diego Avatar
    Diego

    How will this affect existing payment gateways, which don’t render any custom UI, but only rely on the settings API to register their fields? I would expect them to work exactly as they do now, without any changes. It should be up to WooCommerce alone to take care of abstracting the whole “React stuff” (which, quite frankly, none of my clients has ever needed) and render the UI.

    As I’ve been repeating for years, backward compatibility is a must, no matter the target or the changes required to achieve it.

    Reply
    1. Brent MacKinnon Avatar
      Brent MacKinnon

      Thanks for raising this important point. Yes, payment gateways using the settings API should continue to work as they do now – no changes needed. We’re handling all the React implementation within WooCommerce itself, so gateway developers won’t need to worry about that part.

      I can confirm backwards compatibility is a key priority for this update, and the team has designed it to work with existing gateway implementations.

      Reply
  5. danielspain Avatar
    danielspain

    I’m a big fan of improvements, but retrocompatibility is a must in something so sensitive as a payment gateway/wc interaction. As wc don’t have an LTS(my two cents: it’s badly needed), this feature should be optional…you don’t even know how many payment gateways are in the third world that are behind the common updates that are possible to adopt in us/europe…thousands of stores that don’t have an option to update if it will be no retrocompatibility…thanks in advance

    Reply

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