Buy now, pay later on WooCommerce: which provider each market can actually use

Almost every BNPL method is domestic-only, and the country that counts is the one your payment account is registered in. WooPayments says it plainly: the customer's billing country must match your account country, and BNPL is not available for cross-border sales. Stripe documents the same limit for Afterpay and Affirm, with cross-border Afterpay still in private preview. A US store that enables Afterpay does not get Clearpay for its British customers. It gets nothing for them. Klarna is the exception, and only in Europe: a business in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland can take Klarna from customers across that area in their own currency, while a US, Canadian or Australian store takes it only from shoppers at home. The table at the end of the page is the position on 17 October 2026. Two gaps catch people. WooPayments does not offer Klarna to Canadian or Australian accounts, although Stripe does, so the Stripe extension or Klarna's own plugin is the route there. And PayPal lists Pay in 4 for Canada, but the WooCommerce PayPal Payments listing names Pay Later only for Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US. Test it on a Canadian account before you promise it on a product page.

Three routes reach the WooCommerce checkout. The gateway toggle: WooPayments has a Buy now, pay later block under Payments → Settings, and the Stripe extension lists Affirm, Afterpay and Klarna, all settling into the Stripe balance you already reconcile. The provider's own extension: Klarna Payments by Klarna, Afterpay by Afterpay, Affirm Payments by Affirm, and Zip's separate ANZ and US plugins, each with its own merchant agreement, payouts and dispute dashboard. And PayPal Pay Later, bundled with PayPal Payments. Take the toggle unless you need a negotiated rate or Zip, which WooPayments does not offer. Running both routes for one provider is the worst setup, and WooPayments tells you to disable the matching extension first. Zip's US plugin was last updated in August 2024 and is flagged as untested with the last three major WordPress releases, so try it on staging. A headless storefront changes none of this, because a hybrid checkout hands the cart to native WooCommerce, where these plugins run.

Gateway rates are the only BNPL prices published for WooCommerce stores. Through WooPayments in the US, Affirm and Afterpay cost 6% + $0.30 per order and Klarna 5.99% + $0.30, against 2.9% + $0.30 for a card. UK: Klarna 4.99% + £0.35, Clearpay 6% + £0.30. Klarna is cheaper in Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands at 2.99% + €0.35, and dearer in France, Ireland, Italy and Spain at 4.99% + €0.40. Stripe lists Zip in the US at 4.5% + $0.30, on a plan that charges the shopper a fee too, and PayPal publishes 4.99% + $0.49 for its US instalments. Direct contracts are negotiated. Afterpay's merchant-fee page describes a fixed fee plus a percentage set in your agreement and gives no number, and we found no current direct Klarna rate published. Scenario: on an $80 order a card costs $2.62 and Afterpay through WooPayments $5.10. Each BNPL order has to recover $2.48 before it breaks even.

Each provider hides outside its cart range, and Stripe's messaging element shows nothing when no plan fits. In the US, Affirm starts at $35 but offers Pay in 4 only between $50 and $500, with monthly plans to $30,000; Afterpay's Pay in 4 runs to $2,000, PayPal's from $10 to $2,000, Zip's from $35 to $1,500. In the UK, Clearpay stops at £1,200, Klarna Pay in 3 at £2,000 and PayPal Pay in 3 at £3,000. With a $30 typical basket, Affirm will be missing from most checkouts.

Since 15 July 2026 the FCA regulates interest-free BNPL, which it calls Deferred Payment Credit: up to 12 instalments within 12 months. The duties sit with the lender. Klarna, Clearpay and PayPal need authorisation or a temporary permission, must check affordability, and must show the amount, the repayment dates and the late fees before the shopper agrees. Shoppers gain the Financial Ombudsman Service and, in some cases, a Section 75 claim against the lender. Agreements made before that date stay unregulated. The store needs no permission of its own, because the FCA exempts broking of these agreements. Advertising tightens through contracts instead: PayPal's developer docs forbid merchants to create or host their own Pay Later content, and Affirm imposes its marketing compliance guides. Delete any hand-written "pay in 3, interest-free" banner from the theme. Offering instalments yourself, without a lender, is a different case under the FCA's rules, and a solicitor should make that call, not a plugin setting. Australia moved first. BNPL providers there have needed an Australian credit licence since 10 June 2025.

The pay-later line under a price is the part of BNPL that sells, and it costs page speed, because each provider renders it with its own third-party script: Stripe's Payment Method Messaging Element needs Stripe.js in the page head, Klarna's On-site messaging runs on Klarna's library, PayPal's on its JS SDK. That script competes for the main thread of the product page, the template where Interaction to Next Paint matters most. The plugins let you contain it. Afterpay's extension has separate switches for product pages, category pages and the cart. Klarna's has separate product and cart placements with their own data keys, and Zip's US plugin has separate product and cart widgets. Keep product and cart. Turn category messaging off: it repeats one line on every tile of a listing, where shoppers compare products rather than payment terms. Show one provider, not three stacked under the price. Then compare product-page INP in field data, from Search Console or CrUX's 28-day window, before and after the change. If product pages already fail INP, start with the INP fixes and a checkout that answers quickly, not with a widget.

A refund from the WooCommerce order passes through the gateway to the provider, which cancels the instalments still due and returns what the shopper paid. Mind the windows. Through Stripe, Afterpay and Affirm take refunds for 120 days and Klarna and Zip for 180. Afterpay refunds take up to 10 business days and cannot be cancelled. Klarna cannot refund a payment that has become a dispute, so answer return requests fast. A 365-day returns promise breaks at day 120 for Afterpay, after which you repay the customer by another method, by hand. With a long returns window, Klarna's 180 days is the safer of the two.

One provider per market, chosen on cart range and fee, beats a payment step with five logos on it.

• US: PayPal Pay Later if PayPal is already on the checkout, since it needs no new account and Pay in 4 starts at $10. Afterpay or Klarna through WooPayments for baskets of $50 to $500. Affirm once orders pass $2,000, where Afterpay's and PayPal's Pay in 4 stop.
• UK: Klarna over Clearpay. Through Stripe it is cheaper on any order above about £5, and its Pay in 3 reaches £2,000 against Clearpay's £1,200.
• Canada: Afterpay for baskets up to C$2,000, Affirm above that. WooPayments allows Affirm only on sites in US English or Canadian languages, so a store with a Spanish version should skip it.
• Australia: Afterpay, the only BNPL WooPayments offers an Australian account. Zip's own plugin earns its place only through Zip Money above A$1,000.
• EU: Klarna, the only BNPL in WooPayments for the eurozone, and in France only as Pay in 3. PayPal adds its own instalments in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Low order values come first. On a $40 basket the WooPayments premium over a card is $1.24, most of a second card fee, and through Stripe Affirm offers only its 30-day option below $50. B2B, subscriptions and cross-border orders are excluded from WooPayments BNPL, and Afterpay refuses alcohol, donations, pre-orders and NFTs. Foreign buyers need local methods and currency instead, covered under selling internationally. And if shoppers already leave at one checkout step, a fifth payment button will not fix it; find the step through the cart abandonment checks.

The free store audit covers these settings: which BNPL methods your gateway can enable, whether the messaging loads where it does nothing, and what it costs product-page INP. NextWoo invoices in USD, GBP, EUR, CAD or AUD at fixed prices. The lender contract and any credit-law question stay with you and your adviser.