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Love this company. Loved the REIGN product. They were there the entire time helping me set things up; and when things went wrong? They were quick to take action and help find a solution.
Payments
Reign + Stripe. Payments integration.
Stripe is the most-deployed online payment processor. Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, plus subscriptions.
Reign + Stripe powers paid community memberships, course enrollment, marketplace transactions, and one-time product sales. Native Stripe integration via WooCommerce, MemberPress, LearnDash, or LifterLMS - whichever your kit uses.
How it works with Reign.
Reign ships no plugin-specific styles for Stripe, and does not need to: a payment gateway has no frontend templates of its own, it plugs into whatever plugin is taking the money. Nothing here fights the theme, so there is no compatibility work to do and no override layer to maintain. What Reign does affect is the pages around it. Your checkout is rendered by WooCommerce, MemberPress, LearnDash or whichever plugin your kit uses, and those are what Reign styles. Reign ships dedicated WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads stylesheets, so a Stripe checkout running through either of those inherits the theme properly.
When to use it.
Use Stripe unless you have a specific reason not to. It is the default for a reason: the best documentation, the widest plugin support, and card, wallet, ACH and subscription handling in one account. The main case for PayPal alongside it is buyer familiarity in markets where people expect to see the button, and running both is common rather than contradictory.
4 steps to ship.
1
Install the Stripe plugin or the Stripe Payment Gateway for the plugin your kit ships with (WooCommerce / MemberPress / LearnDash).
2
Connect your Stripe account via OAuth in the plugin settings.
3
Enable webhooks for refund + subscription events.
4
Test in Stripe test mode before flipping to live.
What to check once it is live.
Run one real transaction in live mode for a small amount and refund it, because test mode does not exercise everything. Confirm the webhook is firing, since a missed webhook is how subscriptions silently fail to cancel. Check the receipt email actually arrives, and view the order on a phone.
Stripe integration questions.
Which plugin handles Stripe?
Depends on your kit. LearnMate uses LearnDash Stripe. StoreMate uses WooCommerce Stripe. BuddyPress Community Bundle uses MemberPress Stripe. All work natively with Reign.
Stripe Connect for marketplaces?
Yes - Dokan Pro, WCFM, and WC Vendors all support Stripe Connect for vendor payouts. Reign styles the vendor onboarding flow.
Does Reign style the Stripe checkout?
Indirectly, and that is the accurate answer. Stripe has no templates of its own; the checkout belongs to WooCommerce, MemberPress or whatever is processing the order. Reign ships dedicated WooCommerce and EDD styles, so a checkout running through either of those looks like the rest of your site.
Do I need Stripe and PayPal?
Many sites run both, and it costs nothing to. Stripe handles the bulk and PayPal captures the buyers who will only pay that way. Each gateway is configured separately in your commerce plugin, so adding the second one later is straightforward if you would rather start with one.
Does adding a gateway slow the site down?
It adds what any plugin adds, and the honest way to find out is to measure your own site rather than trust a general claim. A payment gateway loads its script on the checkout page rather than site-wide, so the cost is confined to the page where it is needed. On a community site the heavy pages are almost always the dynamic ones, profiles, feeds and directories, so that is where to look first if the site feels slow.
Get the BuddyPress Community Bundle kit.
The Reign theme is $99/year or $249 lifetime and it is the only required purchase. The BuddyPress Community Bundle kit bundles it with the add-ons for an Stripe-ready setup.