For most WooCommerce stores, the answer is Stripe plus PayPal – together they cover almost every buyer.
Stripe, through the official WooCommerce Stripe plugin built by Stripe, is the workhorse: credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and options like Klarna and Afterpay, across 135+ currencies, with a deep, well-maintained integration. PayPal, via the official WooCommerce PayPal Payments plugin, captures the large share of buyers who trust and prefer PayPal.
Two rules matter more than the brand:
Use the official plugins. Stripe maintains its own WooCommerce gateway and PayPal maintains theirs. Third-party or “nulled” payment plugins are a security and reliability risk on the one part of your site that touches money.
The gateway is free; the processor takes a per-transaction fee. Installing Stripe or PayPal costs nothing extra in WooCommerce – you pay the processor’s standard rate per sale, not a platform fee.
Which to lead with depends on your market, but Stripe-first with PayPal alongside is the safe default. More: Stripe vs Square · is it free? · best PayPal plugin