WooCommerce payments in Armenia, step by step with the Paynet plugin

If your shop runs on WooCommerce, taking Armenian payments does not need a developer. The Paynet plugin is on WordPress.org, connects to your account in one click, and puts every processor you have enabled in front of your buyers as its own checkout option. This is the whole path, from an empty plugins screen to a live order, with the parts that usually go wrong called out where they happen.

Before you start

Three things to have ready:

• A WooCommerce store priced in AMD. The gateway accepts Armenian dram only and refuses checkout in any other store currency, deliberately, so an order can never be under-charged by a currency mismatch.
• A store that meets the plugin's requirements: WordPress 6.0 or newer, WooCommerce 7.0 or newer, PHP 7.4 or newer. High-Performance Order Storage and the Cart and Checkout Blocks are both supported, so you do not have to choose between the modern stack and this gateway.
• Your provider credentials, or the intention to get them. You hold your own contracts with each bank and wallet, and the credentials go into your Paynet account. You do not need them to install the plugin, only to take a real payment.

Step 1: install the plugin

The plugin is published on WordPress.org as DigitalBrains Payment Gateway for Paynet.am, currently version 1.6.12.

In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins > Add New, search for Paynet, and install it from the directory. If you would rather install the ZIP by hand, download it from the plugins page and use Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin. Either way, activate it on the Plugins screen afterwards.

One note on updates: the plugin tells you on its settings page when a newer release exists and gives you a download link, but nothing is ever pushed to your store without you asking.

Step 2: connect in one click

Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments > Paynet and press Connect.

A small Paynet window opens. If you already have an account, sign in and the store is linked to it. If you do not, an account is created on the spot, free, with the store domain, store name and admin email as the starting details. Approve the connection and the window closes.

Two useful things happened in that click:

• Your domain is verified automatically. No DNS record to add, no file to upload. Buyers can only pay on a verified domain, and the connection handles that for you.
• No API keys were typed. The plugin authenticates with a connect token that is bound to this one store, so there is no secret key sitting in your WordPress database waiting to be leaked.

Until the store is connected, the settings page shows only the Connect step. The full settings appear afterwards, which is a deliberate way of stopping half-configured gateways from reaching a checkout.

Step 3: add providers and enable methods

The plugin shows the payment methods your Paynet account offers. If that list is empty, the settings page now tells you why, whether the account still needs a payment provider or a verified domain, and gives you a one-click link straight to the right screen.

To fill the list, open your Paynet dashboard and add the providers you have contracts for:

• ARCA and the member banks (Ameriabank, Inecobank, Evocabank, Converse Bank, AraratBank, ACBA, IDBank, Ardshinbank and others), each with the API username and password your bank issued.
• Idram, with its EDP Account ID and secret key.
• Telcell, with its Shop ID and Shop Key.

Connect each provider to your store's domain, and it appears at your WooCommerce checkout as its own named option, on both the classic checkout and the block-based one, with its logo. The logos ship inside the plugin and are never loaded from a remote server, and there is a switch to hide them if your theme is happier without.

While you are in the settings, two options are worth a moment. Payment page language can follow the shopper's storefront language or be fixed to Armenian, Russian or English. And the per-method display names can be set per language if your store runs Polylang or WPML, so buyers see the method under a name you chose.

Step 4: test with the sandbox

Do not make your first real payment your first payment. Add the Sandbox provider in your Paynet dashboard and it appears at your WooCommerce checkout like any other method, so you can walk through a genuine storefront order from cart to thank-you page. No bank or wallet is contacted, no money moves, and nothing is billed or counted.

On the test payment page the card number decides the outcome:

• 4111 1111 1111 1111 approved
• 4000 0000 0000 0002 declined by issuer
• 4000 0000 0000 0069 insufficient funds
• 4000 0000 0000 0101 3-D Secure failed
• 4000 0000 0000 0119 processor timeout
• 4000 0000 0000 0259 transaction expired

Any other 16-digit number is approved, and expiry, CVV and cardholder name are not checked. Test payments appear under the Test tab of your dashboard.

Run at least these four passes:

1. A successful order. It should reach a paid state in WooCommerce without you touching it.
2. A declined order. The buyer should see a sensible message and be able to try again.
3. An abandoned payment. Close the payment page instead of paying. The buyer is returned to the Pay for order page, the order keeps its items, and it can be paid again.
4. A slow payment. Useful because of what the plugin does with it, covered next.

Step 5: how the plugin handles order status

This is the part worth understanding even if you never read another line about payments, because it is what stops both fraud and lost sales.

A webhook is only a hint. When Paynet notifies the store that something happened, the plugin does not believe the message. It calls back to your Paynet account, authenticated with the store's connect token, and asks for the authoritative payment status. It then checks the paid amount and the currency against the order before completing it. A forged notification cannot mark an order paid, because nothing about the notification is trusted in the first place.

The store checks in three places. On the webhook, on the customer's thank-you page, and in a background reconcile task. A buyer who closes the browser after paying still gets a completed order.

A late payment completes the order rather than stranding it. If a payment is confirmed after the checkout window has closed, the order completes instead of staying cancelled and unfulfilled. That case is exactly why step 4's slow payment test is worth running: it is the one where a shop with a naive integration ships nothing while the bank has taken the money.

Step 6: go live

Live payments start once your business is verified in your Paynet dashboard. Until then, everything above works in test mode with unlimited free test payments, so you can have your store completely ready before verification is finished.

When you go live, do the same first order yourself, small. Payments under 500 AMD are free, and beyond that Paynet charges 20 AMD per completed live payment with no monthly fee and no percentage. Every new account starts with 200 free transactions and 500 free receipts, and prepaid units never expire. The details are on the pricing page.

Refunds and fiscal receipts

Two things you get without extra work:

• Refunds from the WooCommerce order screen, full or partial. Paynet processes the refund and the result is noted on the order. Refunds cost you nothing on the Paynet side.
• e-HDM fiscal receipts, if e-HDM is configured on your Paynet account. The receipt QR is shown to the customer on the thank-you page and the receipt link is attached to the order notes. Receipts for payments taken through Paynet are free. Extra fees, for example a cash-on-delivery charge, appear as their own line on the receipt.

What to do next

• Install DigitalBrains Payment Gateway for Paynet.am from WordPress.org and press Connect.
• Add your providers in the Paynet dashboard and connect them to your store's domain.
• Add the Sandbox provider and run the four test passes above, including the abandoned and slow payment cases.
• Start business verification, and the e-HDM setup if you have not already, so live payments and receipts are ready together.
• Take one small live order yourself before announcing anything.
• If a step does not behave as described, write to [email protected] with your store domain, and check the plugins page for the other platforms if you run more than one shop.

WooCommerce, WordPress, ARCA, Idram, Telcell and the bank names above are trademarks of their respective owners. Paynet is an independent payment gateway operated by Digital Brains LLC in Yerevan; merchants hold their own contracts with each provider.