All four gateways will take BLIK and cards - they differ in fees, payout timing and the number of clicks between the customer and paying. These are the four dominant payment providers on the Polish market, and for a typical Polish WooCommerce store the choice looks like this: PayU and Przelewy24 are the safe default at higher turnover and where instalments matter, Tpay suits small and mid-sized stores that value talking to a real person, and Paynow makes sense when the company banks with mBank and wants fast access to its money. The technical difference between them is small - each has an official WooCommerce plugin. The real difference sits in the contract and in how the gateway behaves inside the cart.
Below I break it into pieces: what to compare, where the traps are, and how to wire a gateway in - including a PayU WooCommerce integration - so that it does not lose orders.
What a payment gateway is and what it does in WooCommerce
A payment gateway is the intermediary that takes money from the customer, passes it to your business account and sends the store a “paid” message. The customer clicks “buy and pay”, pays with the operator (on their page or in a window inside your checkout), comes back to the store, and the order changes status to “processing” by itself.
The key element is the callback notification (operators call it a notification or IPN) - a separate signal sent from the operator’s server straight to your store. If the customer closes the browser right after paying, that is what still gets the order marked as paid. Most failures of the “the customer paid but the dashboard says unpaid” type are a problem with that one mechanism, not with the whole gateway.
Comparison: PayU, Przelewy24, Tpay, Paynow
| Gateway | For whom | Strong point | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| PayU | Higher turnover, more expensive products | Wide range of instalments and deferred payments, a brand customers recognise in the cart | Fees are negotiated against turnover - starting terms can be weaker for a small store |
| Przelewy24 | The universal choice for a B2C store | The widest selection of banks and methods in one window, a mature plugin | Too many methods overwhelm the customer unless you trim the list |
| Tpay | Small and mid-sized stores, sole traders | Simple dashboard, predictable settlement, a named account manager | Fewer add-ons than the biggest players |
| Paynow | Companies banking with mBank | Fast onboarding and fast access to funds within the same bank | Tightly tied to one bank - after changing banks, recalculate from scratch |
The table shows direction, not a verdict - any of these operators will handle a standard store, and the decision usually comes down to the offer you get once you quote your turnover.
Fees and payouts - what actually to look at
A commission is not one number but a set of rates: one for BLIK, another for instant bank transfer, cards and instalments. Price lists change and are negotiable at higher turnover, so do not copy percentages off blogs - ask for a quote and compare like for like across all four.
What to ask before signing:
- Separate rates for BLIK, bank transfer and cards - in Polish stores BLIK usually accounts for a large share of payments, so that rate most often decides your bill
- Payout timing to your account - daily, every few days, or only after crossing a threshold
- Fixed fees - subscription, payout fee, refund fee
- The cost of refunds and chargebacks - does the transaction fee come back to you on a refund, or is it lost
- Terms for foreign sales - currencies, conversion, methods popular in a given country
- Notice period and any deposit - a surprise in industries considered higher risk
A fraction of a percent only becomes visible at solid turnover. In a starting store, payout timing matters more, because it decides whether you can restock next week.
BLIK and one-tap payments
BLIK is one of the most-chosen methods in Polish stores and all four gateways support it - the difference is how many steps separate the customer from paying. The variant that works best is the one where the six-digit code field appears directly in the cart, with no jump to the operator’s page.
The second thing worth enabling is wallets: Apple Pay and Google Pay in WooCommerce cut card payment down to one confirmation on a phone. They will not replace BLIK, but they help with mobile traffic and foreign customers. A full overview of what is worth having in the cart I gathered in the piece on payment methods in WooCommerce.
Instalments and deferred payments - when they make sense
Instalments and “pay in 30 days” raise cart value where the unit price is high - furniture, equipment, courses, services. On a cart worth a few dozen zloty they are just noise in the checkout.
The rule I apply with clients: enable instalments when the average order value passes a few hundred zloty and the product is bought after some thought rather than on impulse. At that point the choice usually narrows to PayU and Przelewy24. Also check whether the operator shows the instalment amount on the product page - that works much harder than information discovered only in the cart.
Wiring a gateway in, step by step
The integration itself is simple, provided you do it in this order:
- Open an account with the operator and pass company verification - the longest part of the process, it can take several working days
- Install the operator’s official plugin - “universal” plugins most often end up unmaintained
- Paste in the API keys - separate ones for test and production mode, easy to mix up
- Set the notification URL in the operator’s dashboard, if it does not fill in automatically
- Trim the method list to what you actually want - BLIK, instant transfer, card, possibly instalments
- Place a test order for a small, real amount and check the status in the dashboard plus both emails: to the customer and to you
- Repeat the test on a phone - that is where most customers buy
- Check the abandonment scenario - close the window after paying and see whether the order still changed status
The order is the same for all four operators. PayU adds one extra step: keys are issued per point of sale (POS), so with several stores it is easy to paste keys from the wrong point and end up with payments visible in the dashboard but not matched to orders.
Point eight is the one most often skipped, and it is the one that comes back later as complaints.
The most common integration mistakes
A gateway rarely breaks on its own. What breaks is its surroundings:
- A blocked notification - a firewall, a security plugin or the hosting rejects the connection from the operator, so orders stay “pending payment” despite being paid
- Test keys in production - the payment looks successful, but the money never arrives
- An over-long checkout - the more fields, the more drop-off
- A cache conflict - a cached thank-you page shows somebody else’s order or an empty one
- No consistency with invoicing - the paid status never reaches accounting, so documents get issued by hand
If unpaid orders increase after a gateway change, the cause is almost always technical, not “customers changed their minds” - I laid out the typical scenarios in the piece on abandoned carts.
Which one to pick - the decision shortcut
| Situation | Sensible choice |
|---|---|
| New store, low turnover, simple range | Tpay or Paynow - fast start |
| Account with mBank, fast payouts matter | Paynow |
| B2C store with a wide range and mobile traffic | Przelewy24 |
| Expensive products, instalments and deferred payment needed | PayU |
| Selling abroad as well | PayU or Przelewy24, after checking local methods |
You can run two gateways at once - one for BLIK and transfers, another purely for instalments. That makes sense in a bigger store, but it complicates settlement, so I advise against it at the start.
When it is worth handing over
Plugging in the plugin itself is an hour’s work. The problem starts where payment has to get along with everything else: invoicing, stock, the courier and the statuses sent to the customer. If you want certainty that no paid order disappears along the way, I start with a free diagnosis - I walk your checkout as a customer, make a test payment and send a list of what does not work.
When the diagnosis turns up bigger work - a gateway migration, a cart rebuild, wiring payments into accounting - you get a written quote before the start, at a fixed price. Projects of this type usually fit the 5,000-10,000 PLN net range, and smaller fixes I handle under optimization. If the store is still being built, we get payments right from the outset during the WooCommerce store build.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a PayU WooCommerce integration take? Configuring the plugin and testing is usually one day of work. The longest wait is company verification on the operator’s side - several working days, independent of the store. Open the account before you finish building the store, so the two do not queue up.
Can I have several payment gateways at once in one store? Yes, WooCommerce lets you enable any number of methods at the same time. In practice more than two gateways means extra settlement work and a cluttered cart, so it is better to pick one main gateway and possibly a second for instalments.
Which gateway has the lowest fees? There is no single answer, because rates are negotiated against your turnover and the mix of payment methods in your store. The same operator can be cheapest at high BLIK volume and most expensive on foreign card sales. Ask all four for a quote with real figures and compare the monthly cost, not the headline percentage.
The customer paid but the order shows as unpaid - what do I do? That is almost always a blocked notification from the operator’s server to the store. Check in the gateway dashboard whether the transaction is completed, and compare the notification address with what the plugin sees. Until it is fixed you can mark orders manually, but the bug affects every subsequent payment, so it has to be removed at the source.
Running a store where something does not work the way it should? I build and rebuild WooCommerce stores - from a single fix to reworking the whole sales flow. Tell me what you are dealing with and I will send back a scope and a price.