Accept Monero on WooCommerce: What Actually Works in 2026

You run a WooCommerce store and you want to accept Monero (XMR). Simple enough — except the first plugin you’ll find is abandoned, half the tutorials point at dead projects, and nobody tells you the one thing that actually matters before you pick. This is the honest version.

If you want the full landscape across every platform, start with the pillar guide: How to Accept Monero: An Honest Guide for Merchants. This page is the WooCommerce-specific answer.

First, a warning: skip the plugin you’ll find first

Search “WooCommerce Monero” and the top results are dead:

• monerowp (the “Monero Integrations” WooCommerce plugin) — the canonical top result, last released in 2018. Abandoned, with a pile of open issues and no upkeep for years.
• The Monero WooCommerce Extension that succeeded it — stalled around 2021, tested against a long-obsolete WooCommerce version, a few dozen active installs.

Running an abandoned payment plugin is how you end up with missed orders, broken price feeds, or a security hole in your checkout. Don’t use either. The good news: there are live, maintained options in 2026 — you just have to get past the SEO graveyard to find them.

Decide one thing first: custody

Before the “which plugin” question, answer the one that actually drives everything: who controls the money?

• Custodial — a hosted processor receives your customers’ XMR into its wallet, and you withdraw later (often after creating an account and passing KYC). Easiest to set up; you give up control and your sales privacy.
• Non-custodial — payments land directly in your Monero wallet. Nobody can freeze or lose your funds, and there’s no withdrawal step. A little more to set up.

That single choice splits the WooCommerce options cleanly. (For the full custody/privacy/effort framing, see the pillar guide.)

Your real options for WooCommerce in 2026

1. Easiest — a hosted processor’s WooCommerce plugin (custodial)

Processors like NOWPayments, Plisio, and Cryptomus ship official WooCommerce plugins. Install, connect your account, paste an API key, and you’re accepting XMR in minutes.

• Pros: fastest path, nothing to run, support exists.
• Cons: custodial or “forwarding” (they hold the funds, briefly or otherwise), ~0.5–1% fees plus conversion/withdrawal markup, usually KYC to withdraw, and the provider sees every sale. Some market themselves as “non-custodial” but for XMR they forward funds to you — that’s transient custody, not money landing straight in your wallet.
• Best for: stores that want XMR live today and don’t mind a third party in the middle.

2. Simplest self-custody — the Greyforest gateway

The Greyforest XMR Payment Gateway for WooCommerce is the simplest non-custodial answer: free, 0% fees, no account, and payments go straight to your wallet. It’s also private in a way the hosted processors aren’t — no third party ever sees your payment stream, because (as you’re about to read) nothing watches the chain at all.

• How it works: you paste your Monero wallet address; at checkout the customer sees that address, a QR, and an exact XMR amount computed live from CoinGecko’s USD price — with your WooCommerce order number encoded into the amount’s final decimal digits. The order then sits on-hold.
• The honest caveat — it does not verify payments. No node, no view key, no block explorer: you check your own wallet, read the order number off the trailing digits of the incoming amount, and mark the order paid by hand. “Nothing to run” is true because there’s no automation at all. (We verified this in the plugin’s source; its own readme says the same.)
• One static address for every order. To be precise about what that does and doesn’t cost you: it is not an on-chain leak — Monero’s stealth addresses mean even someone who knows your address can’t see payments to it. But your entire sales history sits behind one publicly displayed address, with order numbers readable in the amounts by anyone who ever gets access to your wallet or view key, and there’s no per-order compartmentalization. No subaddress support.
• Matching is fragile. The QR encodes only your address, so the customer must hand-type the long exact amount; if they round it, you’re reconciling that order over email.
• Other limits: USD-priced stores only, classic (non-block) WooCommerce checkout only, installed from the developer’s GitHub (it’s not in the wordpress.org directory), and quiet since its last release (v2.2.2, Nov 2025) — works today, but factor the maintenance pace in.
• Best for: small/low-volume stores that want self-custody with zero infrastructure and don’t mind hands-on order reconciliation. At real order volume, the manual checking becomes the job — that’s when you want BTCPay below.

3. Self-custody, done properly — BTCPay Server + the Monero plugin

Run BTCPay Server behind your store (via BTCPay’s WooCommerce plugin) and add the community Monero plugin. This is the technically correct setup: each order gets its own subaddress (proper privacy), funds land in your wallet, fees are 0%, and you get BTC + Lightning in the same place.

• Cost: you operate BTCPay — a server plus a Monero node (your own, or a remote node you control). The plugin’s own docs say Monero setup is “not recommended for non-advanced users.”
• Best for: stores that want it done right and can run/host BTCPay (or use a managed BTCPay host). See the node reality in the pillar’s setup section.

Quick comparison

Option	Custody	Run a server?	Per-order privacy	Fees	Best for
Hosted plugin (NOWPayments / Plisio / Cryptomus)	Custodial / forwarding	No	None (provider sees all)	~0.5–1%+	Fastest start
Greyforest	Self-custody	No	Weak (one static address)	Free	Zero-infra self-custody — manual payment checks
BTCPay + Monero	Self-custody	Yes	Strong (subaddresses)	0%	Doing it properly
monerowp	—	—	—	—	Dead (2018) — don’t use

Step-by-step: the simplest self-custody path (Greyforest)

1. Have a Monero wallet you control (Cake Wallet, Feather, Monero GUI…) and copy its address.
2. Download the plugin ZIP from the developer’s official GitHub (it’s not in the wordpress.org directory) and install it via Plugins → Add New → Upload. It self-updates from GitHub after that.
3. In WooCommerce → Settings → Payments, enable the gateway and paste your address (optionally set its checkout fee/discount percentage). There’s no confirmation setting to configure — you are the payment verification.
4. Place a small test order and pay it from another wallet, typing the exact amount shown (the trailing digits are the order number). Confirm you can spot the payment in your wallet, read the order number off the amount, and mark the order paid.
5. Go live — and build the wallet check into your routine, because reconciling orders against incoming payments by hand is how this gateway works.

(For the custodial route, each processor’s WooCommerce plugin has its own connect-and-paste-API-key flow; follow their docs.)

Do I need to run a Monero node?

• Hosted processor plugin: no — they run everything (and hold the funds).
• Greyforest: no node — because it doesn’t detect payments at all. Your own wallet is the detection mechanism, checked manually.
• BTCPay + Monero: yes — your own node, or a remote node you control (a public node you don’t control can lie about confirmations). A remote node removes the initial chain sync (hundreds of GB — or about a third of that for a pruned node), not the server you operate.

More on the node question in the pillar guide.

FAQ

Is monerowp safe to use? No — it’s been abandoned since 2018. Don’t run an unmaintained payment plugin.

Can I accept Monero on WooCommerce without running a server? Yes — either a hosted processor plugin (custodial) or the Greyforest gateway (self-custody with zero infrastructure, at the price of checking your wallet and marking orders paid yourself).

Does WooCommerce support Monero natively? No — you need a gateway plugin. WooCommerce itself doesn’t speak crypto.

What’s the most private option? BTCPay + the Monero plugin — a fresh subaddress per order and verification on your own infrastructure. (A static-address setup isn’t “linkable on-chain” — Monero’s stealth addresses prevent that — but it keeps your whole sales history behind one publicly displayed address, with no per-order compartmentalization.)

Bottom line

• Want it live today and don’t mind a middleman → a hosted processor’s WooCommerce plugin.
• Want self-custody with nothing to run → Greyforest, accepting manual payment checks and the static-address trade-off.
• Want it done properly (per-order privacy, 0% fees, multi-coin) and can run BTCPay → BTCPay + the Monero plugin.

Whichever you pick, lead with the custody question — it’s the one decision that determines everything else.

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Want this set up for you, or want to hear when a hosted, non-custodial “Stripe for Monero” exists (the gap nobody fills yet)? Join the waitlist on the main guide →

Related: How to Accept Monero (pillar) · Monero quick facts.

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