What is Bolt and How to integrate it with WooCommerce?

As essential as the WooCommerce platform is in a WordPress site for selling online, most developers would agree the plugin has limited functionalities. Fortunately, there are tons of extensions and add-ons, and a few good WooCommerce support service providers, available for sellers to perform the needed customization. Bolt Checkout is one such robust plugin that has been a compelling solution when it comes to boosting sales and providing decent security.

So, this article is about Bolt Checkout, the plugin; how it works, what it does, and how it benefits the sellers as a whole. However, before we dive into all those details, we will first provide a brief concept of Bolt, as a company and WooCommerce, the open-source platform.

Understanding WooCommerce and Bolt Payment Gateway

As eCommerce is the way most businesses are operating right now, WordPress introduced an open-source eCommerce solution name WooCommerce, which is primarily free to use. So, if you are a small business and have a WordPress site, you can quickly set up your online store in a matter of minutes, and start selling your products and services.

Now, with the growing business demands, every seller needs additional features, from a design perspective to the functions. That is where WooCommerce started building extensions and addons. Soon, 3rd-party companies joined the queue and began developing unique features which one can integrate into the WooCommerce modules. Then comes the popular payment gateway companies, and started developing payment solutions that can work with WooCommerce.

Bolt is one of such payment gateways, who has built a plugin, which you can use to not only accept payments from your customers but also to boost sales performance. They name the plugin as Bolt Checkout. There are a ton of appealing features that Bolt Checkout do offer, prior to receiving payments; something we will learn now.

Benefits of Bolt Checkout

There are loads of benefits of using Bolt Checkout integrated into WooCommerce. They are as follows:

With Bolt, your customers can place an order by a single click.
The plugin offers eye-catchy responsive designs which your customers can access from every device.
It takes a maximum of a week to activate the payment gateway and integrate into the site.
Bolt offers a dedicated accounts manager if you need any assistance.
One of the significant reasons for using Bolt is that it provides 100% coverage on chargebacks. You will get risk coverage on international payments as well.
As the core operations of the payment gateway involve machine learning features, the application is capable of detecting fraudulent activities.
Bolt comes with PCI DSS Level I and GDPR compliant, which is equivalent to any reputed bank’s security.
The user-interface and core features of Bolt Checkout increases sales from 10% – 20%.
Bolt provides complete freedom to the sellers as the application is capable of detecting frauds and lower down the Chargeback ratio significantly. So, you will save a ton of money annually.
Bolt Checkout comes with manual fraud review. So, you don’t have to take any headache of reviewing the placed orders as the system can take care of it.

How to Setup Bolt Checkout in WooCommerce?

Before we go on install Bolt Checkout and set it up, it would be best to know the prerequisites first:

You need to install the WooCommerce plugin from the stock directory of WordPress. Make sure the theme that you are using is compatible with WooCommerce or not. Usually, most themes do.
You need to check whether the PHP version is the latest. However, it can run on backdated versions, but that is never recommended.
Before you install the plugin, make sure you create an account with Bolt Payment gateway. We suggest you visit the official site and talk to the support team to know what is best from you.

Now once we have a clear view of the prerequisites, let us discuss the installation process. There are two ways you can install the plugin. Let us know them both:

Automatic Process:

Since Bolt Checkout is a stock plugin of WordPress, you can directly get it from the plugin library. To do that, from the WP Dashboard, hover the mouse pointer over Plugins, and then click on Add New.
After that, you will get the Plugin Library open. Find the search bar on the right-hand side. Type in there ‘Bolt.’ You should get Bolt Checkout flashing first on the screen.
Click on install, then as soon as the installation is done, click on activate.
Bolt Checkout is ready to use.

Manual Process:

Go to WordPress.org. Over there you will see ‘Plugins’ on the main menu. Click on that.
You should then see a search bar, where you can look for a plugin. So, type ‘Bolt’ over that and click on the search icon.
Bolt Checkout should be the first plugin on the list, which you should download. It will be a .zip file.
Go back to WP Dashboard, and go to Plugins > Add New.
Now, at the top, you should see an option “Upload Plugin.” Click on that and should be able to upload the Bolt Checkout .zip file.
Then you should see the option to install, and then activation.

The Conclusion – Setup

Setting up Bolt Checkout is easy and quick. Go to WooCommerce settings, and click on Payment, where you can see all the payment gateways listed. You should see Bolt Checkout as well. Then click on ‘Manage.’ Then you need to fill up all the keys which you should have if you own a verified account. Then save the changes and your Bolt Payment gateway is good to go. You can then accept payments.