Can Your Business Use Stripe for Online Payments in 2025?

Do you need to accept payments on your WordPress website and wondering if your business can use Stripe?

While Stripe is the best payment processor, certain products and services, as well as businesses in jurisdictions considered high risk, are prohibited. Stripe continuously monitors accounts and evaluates risk to protect its payment network’s integrity.

In this article, we’ll cover the types of businesses Stripe doesn’t support to help you decide if it’s right for you. We’ll also go over a couple of the best WordPress plugins you can use with Stripe to collect online payments.

In This Article

Using Stripe to Process Online Payments

Stripe is our favorite payment processor based on several reasons, including its user-friendliness, simple pricing structure, PCI compliance, anti-fraud tools, and seamless integrations with hundreds of different tools and selling platforms like WooCommerce.

For most businesses and organizations that need to accept online payments, Stripe is ideal. It doesn’t require users to be developers or web experts to collect payments via 10+ payment methods effortlessly.

You can use it to collect one-time and subscription payments, create branded checkout pages, automate communication with customers regarding purchases, process refunds, write custom fraud protection rules, and more.

One of the best parts about Stripe is that it works closely with its partners to help you boost sales and average order value. For example, its partnership with Klarna lets you offer buy now, pay later (BNPL) options to customers.

You can also use it to collect payments via digital wallets like Cash App Pay and Apple Pay to boost conversions.

WooCommerce + Stripe

If your online store is powered by WooCommerce, you probably already know that it offers built-in Stripe support right out of the box that you can use with WooPayments.

Beginning March 1, 2025, Stripe’s updated terms to its User Agreement and Connected Account Agreement will apply to all WooPayments users.

To learn more about how the updates will affect your business, see Stripe’s full article on specific updates regarding your location.

According to Stripe, users don’t need to take any action to accept the new terms.

Remember that by continuing to use WooPayments after March 1, 2025, you are agreeing to the new terms.

WP Simple Pay + Stripe

One of the best parts about using Stripe as your payment processor is that you don’t need to take any steps to become PCI-compliant.

WP Simple Pay, the most powerful and user-friendly Stripe payments plugin for WordPress, offers built-in Stripe security features that allow you to create PCI-compliant and 3D Secure 2.0-ready payment forms.

The plugin also lets you set up your location’s currency settings so that you can collect payments legally from anywhere in the world directly on your website.

You can also use WP Simple Pay and Stripe Tax to set up automatic tax collection to ensure that you stay compliant.

Automatic tax collection takes a few things into account: your location, the product type you’re selling, and most importantly, your customer’s location, to determine the amount of tax to be charged.

Depending on where you collect payments from, you might be legally obligated to register with that country or jurisdiction to collect taxes. This applies even if your business has no physical presence in that country or jurisdiction. Stripe Tax monitors your transactions, so you know when and where you need to register to collect taxes.

To learn more, see the following guide on how to collect taxes for Stripe payments in WordPress.

Stripe Restricted Businesses

We mentioned before that Stripe fully supports most businesses wanting to accept payments. However, a few types of businesses, products, and industries can’t use Stripe’s services. It’s important to familiarize yourself with these restrictions to ensure that your business stays compliant with Stripe’s rules.

Prohibited Business Categories

Although your business may be completely legal, Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform that must meet certain requirements, as well as those from financial partners that prevent it from working with certain industries.

As of June 2024, Stripe has updated its Restricted Business List to include the following categories. This list is not exhaustive but gives you a general idea of what types of businesses Stripe does not support.

• Adult Content
• Content Creation Platforms
• Financial Services
• Gambling Businesses
• Marijuana Businesses
• Pharmaceutical Businesses
• Telemedicine Businesses
• Travel Reservation Services
• Vapes and E-Cigarettes

Jurisdiction-Specific Prohibited Businesses

While Stripe is an excellent processor for global businesses of all sizes, certain business types are prohibited in your jurisdiction.

For example, if your business is based in the United States, the following businesses are prohibited:

• Extended warranties and subscriptions over one year
• Mortgage consulting
• Pseudo-pharmaceuticals or nutraceuticals focused on weight loss
• Shipping brokers and freight forwarders, without prior authorization from Stripe

To see a full list of prohibited businesses, click here.

If you’re unsure whether your business falls under the restricted business umbrella, you can contact Stripe for more information. In some cases, prior written approval is granted.

There you have it! We hope this article helped you learn more about the types of businesses Stripe doesn’t work with and how you can use Stripe payments plugins to easily and securely accept payments on your WordPress website.

If you liked this article, you might also want to check out the following guides:

• Stripe: 8 Reasons Why It’s the Best Payment Processor
• 9 Unique Facts About Stripe You Didn’t Already Know
• The Complete Guide to Setting Up a Stripe Checkout Page in WordPress
• How to Use AI to Block Fraudulent Payments in Stripe
• 4 Best Stripe Dashboard Feature Updates in 2024

What are you waiting for? Get started with WP Simple Pay today!

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