Accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with WHMCS using Coinpayments

This tutorial is part of our WHMCS tutorials series.

In this tutorial I will show you how to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment using WHMCS.

Cryptocurrencies are digital forms of currency that utilise blockchain technology. There are thousands of cryptocurrencies with differing technologies, the most popular being Bitcoin and Etherium. For the sake of this video I will focus on Bitcoin but it can refer to any cryptocurrency. As a whole there are some unique advantages to accepting Bitcoin along side your existing payment methods.

Thanks to the blockchain technology payments made with Bitcoin cannot be disputed or reversed, this is a huge advantage as an online service provider. It is a distinct advantage for those businesses providing services with a higher risk of fraud such as VPNs. Bitcoin and the payment gateway we will be using have very low fees compared to conventional payment methods such as PayPal. You can expect fees on a Bitcoin transaction to be around 70% cheaper than a payment made with PayPal. Bitcoin appeals to technology focused people who may be a unique audience for your business. By accepting Bitcoin you can list your website on directories such as Cryptwerk. This is free marketing for your business.

In order to accept Bitcoin payments using WHMCS we need to use a payment gateway. I recommend using Coinpayments.net. They offer low fees, support all of the top currencies, are easy to use and offer a clean and reliable integration with WHMCS. You will find our referral link for Coinpayments in the description below, we appreciate you using this link for a small kickback.

The first step is to create a Coinpayments account. Click on the Sign Up button in the top right and complete the form to create your account.

Login to your Coinpayments account and click on the Account Settings under the Account menu. Make a note of your Merchant ID.

Click on the Merchant Settings tab on the same page. For the IPN Secret field type a random and unique string. It should consist of uppercase, lowercase letters and numbers. Make a note of this string.

Visit the Coin Settings page. Here you can enable the cryptocurrencies you wish to support allowing your clients to pay any invoice using that currency. You can have payments sent to your account balance, allowing you to move funds at anytime. Or you can add your cryptocurrency addresses to have funds instantly sent to your external wallet. There is also support for providing discounts based on the cryptocurrency used, along with currency conversion options.

Head back to the Coinpayments homepage, click on the Merchant Tools link and then the Find Out More link under the Shopping Cart Plugins. Scroll down to WHMCS and click on the Download button. The ZIP contains the WHMCS gateway module that has been developed by Coinpayments. The module handles the integration between WHMCS and your Coinpayments account and the functionality required to accept Bitcoin payments. Extract the ZIP to your desktop.

Login to your hosting account using an FTP client and open your root WHMCS directory. For your local files open the upload directory within the module ZIP. Upload the modules directory to WHMCS, this will add their gateway within the gateway directory.

Login to your WHMCS admin area and open the System Settings. Next click on the Payment Gateways button and then the All Payment Gateways tab. Click on the CoinPayments.net button to activate the gateway. For the gateway settings enable the Show on Order Form box and set your display name. I recommend including Bitcoin and Etherium within the name as the majority of people are aware of these currencies. Add the Merchant ID and IPN Secret from earlier then click the Save Changes button.

Your WHMCS website can now accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment.

To check that the integration is working I will use an example client account that I have setup in WHMCS. Let's login to this account to see how the cryptocurrency payments function, from the clients perspective. In case you're wondering the template I have installed is Stellar, one of our premium templates for WHMCS. I will test one of the unpaid invoices but it will work in the same way for new orders made using the checkout. From the invoice we can select the Cryptocurrency option using the dropdown. This will then take the client to Coinpayments where they can select which cryptocurrency they would like to pay with. As mentioned earlier you have full control over which currencies you choose to accept and how the payments are handled via the Coin Settings page. Once selected your client will see the wallet address and QR code to send the payment to. Once the payment has been sent Coinpayments will automatically mark the invoice as paid once the transaction has been confirmed by the network.