Paid Memberships Pro – Pay by Check

The Paid Memberships Pro РPay by Check add-on allows you to expand your revenue streams by offering an offline payment alternative to your members. While digital payments are standard, many organizations—particularly B2B services, educational institutions, and non-profits—require the ability to accept payments via physical check. This plugin seamlessly bridges that gap, enabling you to capture memberships that might otherwise be lost due to a lack of preferred payment methods.

Key Features

• Seamless Checkout Integration: Adds a “Pay by Check” option directly to your Paid Memberships Pro checkout page, appearing alongside your existing payment gateways.
• Automated Order Management: When a user selects this method, the system automatically creates an order with a “Pending” status, ensuring the transaction is tracked within your WordPress dashboard.
• Customizable Instructions: Easily provide your members with clear, step-by-step instructions on where to mail their checks, who to make them payable to, and any necessary reference numbers.
• Manual Membership Activation: Gives site administrators full control over membership access. You can wait until the physical check is received and deposited before manually updating the member’s status to “Active.”
• Email Notifications: Automatically triggers emails to both the administrator and the member, confirming that the order has been placed and providing the necessary payment details to complete the process.
• Full Compatibility: Designed specifically for the Paid Memberships Pro ecosystem, ensuring consistent behavior across all your membership levels and checkout forms.

Use Cases / Who It’s For

This plugin is an essential tool for membership site owners who cater to audiences that prefer traditional billing methods or those that operate in environments where credit card processing is not always feasible. If you run a professional association, a local club, or a corporate training portal, you likely have members who need to pay via company check or purchase order. By enabling this feature, you remove friction from the signup process, allowing these members to register immediately while you handle the financial processing on your own timeline.

It is also highly effective for organizations that deal with high-ticket memberships where members may prefer to pay by check to avoid credit card transaction fees or to comply with internal accounting policies. By offering this flexibility, you demonstrate professionalism and accommodate the diverse financial workflows of your user base.

Setup / How It Works

Integrating the Pay by Check method into your membership site is a straightforward process designed to get you up and running quickly:

1. Install and Activate: Upload and activate the plugin within your WordPress dashboard just like any other Paid Memberships Pro add-on.
2. Configure Settings: Navigate to the plugin settings page to enable the gateway and input your specific payment instructions. This is where you define the mailing address and payee information that members will see.
3. Define Checkout Visibility: Choose which membership levels should offer the “Pay by Check” option, allowing you to restrict this method to specific tiers if necessary.
4. Member Checkout: When a member selects the “Pay by Check” option at checkout, their membership is created with a “Pending” status, and they are shown the instructions you configured.
5. Admin Verification: Once you receive the physical check, simply navigate to the “Orders” section in your Paid Memberships Pro dashboard, locate the pending order, and update the status to “Success” to grant the member full access to your content.

Similar Plugins

While there are various general-purpose “offline payment” plugins available for WooCommerce, the Paid Memberships Pro – Pay by Check add-on is unique in its native integration with the Paid Memberships Pro core architecture. Other solutions, such as the Paid Memberships Pro – Pay by Invoice add-on, offer similar functionality for B2B-focused sites that prefer invoicing over standard check payments. Depending on your specific accounting needs, you may find that one or both of these gateway extensions provide the necessary flexibility to manage your membership billing effectively.