Adding Payments to Your Website: What It Costs and What It Involves
Taking payments on a new website is step 04 work, EUR 3.500 to 7.500, over 6 to 12 weeks. The page where someone pays is the small part. The order record, the provider callback, the receipt and the refund behind it are what you are paying for.
If your project turns out to be a plain catalogue of products, we will point you to a hosted shop platform instead. A fixed quote always follows scoping, so the range above is the budget you plan with, not the invoice.
Why payments on a new site sit at step 04, not step 03
Step 03, the business website at EUR 1.500 to 3.500, is 4 to 7 pages, a CMS, service pages and a way to get in touch or book. Every part of it is a page or a form. Nothing on it has to be correct about money.
Accepting a payment turns the site into a system that must hold a true record. Money arrives while the customer's browser is closed. A payment can succeed at the bank and fail to reach your server. A customer can refresh and pay twice. Someone will want a refund, and your accountant will want to match each order to a bank line. None of that can be skipped, which is why payments are step 04.
What the payment work contains
| Part of the build | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Checkout flow | Confirming the order, entering details, choosing a method. The quickest part to build. |
| Provider integration | Creating the payment on your server, sending the customer to their method, and bringing them back to a page that tells the truth. |
| Webhook handling | The provider reports the outcome in a separate call to your server, which has to be verified and safe to receive twice. |
| Order records | A database row for every attempt, with its own status: pending, paid, failed, expired, refunded. |
| Receipts | The customer's email and your copy, sent once, even when the provider retries. |
| Refunds | Triggered from your admin and written back onto the order so the record stays correct. |
| VAT and invoicing | The right rate, sequential numbering, and correct treatment of business customers elsewhere in the EU. |
| Admin view | Find a payment, read its history and act on it without anyone opening the database. |
| Test and live modes | Proven with test keys, then repeated with a real payment and a real refund before customers see it. |
Which methods matter in the Netherlands
Selling to Dutch customers means iDEAL. It is the method a Dutch buyer looks for first, and a checkout without it reads as a foreign site. The rest depends on who else buys from you.
| Method | When it earns its place |
|---|---|
| iDEAL | Dutch consumers. A bank redirect, so the payment happens or it does not, which keeps disputes rare. |
| Bancontact | Belgian customers. Same shape as iDEAL. |
| Debit and credit card | International buyers, and the base that wallets sit on. Brings chargeback handling with it. |
| Apple Pay and Google Pay | Buyers on a phone who would rather not type a card number. |
| PayPal | Buyers who prefer to keep their card details in one place. |
| SEPA Direct Debit | Recurring charges. Settlement is not instant and a collection can be reversed later, so your order states have to allow for it. |
| Pay later (Klarna, Riverty, in3) | Retail baskets where the buyer wants to receive first. The provider fee is higher than a bank redirect, so check it against your margin. |
| Bank transfer on invoice | Business customers used to purchase orders and payment terms. |
Your provider decides which of these you can offer. Mollie is the straightforward choice for Dutch methods, Stripe is strong on cards and subscriptions, and Adyen is built for larger volume with a contract to match. Each publishes its own fee per method, so compare them on the methods you will actually switch on.
What moves the number inside step 04
- One product or a catalogue. A single price paid once is a smaller build than stock, variants and shipping rules.
- One-off or recurring. Subscriptions bring renewals, failed collections, upgrades and cancellations.
- Accounting. An export your bookkeeper can use, or a link into your accounting package, is scope.
- Countries. One country and one currency is the simple case. Selling into more adds VAT rules to the build.
- Discounts, vouchers, deposits, part payments. Each one is a rule to write down, build and then try to break.
Process and timeline
- Scoping. What is sold, to whom, in which country, and what happens after the money lands. This produces the fixed quote.
- Design. Checkout screens and emails in the same visual language as the rest of the site, the way we set out under design and engineering.
- Build in test mode. Every path proven with test keys, including the ugly ones: cancelled, expired, submitted twice, webhook arriving late.
- Go live. One real payment and one real refund, reconciled against the bank line and the invoice, then open to customers.
- Care, EUR 100 to 300 per month: updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes. Not a redesign, not new features.
Step 04 runs 6 to 12 weeks. The part that waits on you is decisions: prices, VAT treatment, refund policy, the wording of the confirmation email, and the provider account in your company's name, which only you can open.
When to spend less
If you invoice after the work is done and nobody complains, keep invoicing. A payment page adds a build cost and a fee on every sale. It earns that back when it removes chasing, not when it makes the site feel modern.
If you only need a deposit before starting a job, your provider can generate a hosted link you send by email. It lives in their dashboard, not in your build, so the site itself can stay a step 01 landing page at EUR 600 to 900 or a step 02 mini-site at EUR 900 to 1.500.
If you sell an ordinary catalogue of physical goods, a hosted shop platform beats a custom checkout on cost and on time. Custom pays off when the selling rules are yours: pricing that has to be calculated, a product configured before it can be priced, or a checkout that must talk to a system you already run. The full price list is on the packages page.
Ownership, accounts and hosting
You own the code, the repository and the database. The provider account is opened in your company's name with your bank details, so the money never passes through us and the relationship stays yours. Hosting is decided per project, once we know what the application needs.
Questions buyers ask
Can payments be added to a site I already have?
Yes, as the payments and subscriptions add-on at EUR 600 to 1.500, when the site can run server code and the repository can be handed over. A site locked inside a closed page builder with no export is the harder case. Scoping checks that before the quote is fixed.
Do I need my own payment provider account?
Yes, and open it early. Providers verify your company and bank account before they enable live payments. That check is out of our hands and it can hold up your launch date, so we ask for it at the start.
What does it cost to keep running?
The provider's fee per transaction, taken from each sale; hosting and the domain, unless the quote includes them; and care at EUR 100 to 300 per month if you want updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes handled. Adding another payment method later is a new feature, so it is quoted on its own.
Is a subscription the same build as a one-off payment?
No. Recurring billing adds renewals, retries, plan changes, cancellations and the customer's own invoice history. It is still step 04, or the payments and subscriptions add-on on an existing site. Step 05 is only for a database-driven product with its own workflows and admin.
Tell us what you sell and where your buyers are, and we will scope it into a fixed number. Start on the contact form.
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JP Studio designs and builds websites, storefronts and product interfaces.