It’s a great company, but its payment processing arm, Wix Payments, operates like a rogue outpost, undermining the very foundation on which Wix was built
By Laura Ferguson
Dame Cabbage Collection
A couple of years ago, I opened an account with Wix to build an online store called Dame Cabbage Collection. It sells garden planters and home accents. The process has been long and trying, not just building the site, which I found reasonable enough to do, but handling the demands of modern-day marketing, most notably those of Google and Pinterest.
It would have been easier, in a lot of ways, if I could have had a site on Shopify. Shopify integrates with more warehouses, and if your warehouse is one of them, Shopify will not only handle purchases, it will sync your orders with your warehouse so it can prepare and ship. And all the information is in one place. In addition, what I consider of high importance, given the nature of my business, Shopify integrates with Pinterest. It would be a huge time-saver if the product information I add or delete on my site were automatically synced with Pinterest. But in the end, I just couldn’t make Shopify work. I struggled with it for weeks before concluding that the only people who could actually build a site with it were specially-trained contractors, which is why Shopify pushes them so hard. It was important to me to be more fleet of foot, to be able to jump into my site and make product changes or design changes whenever I needed, which would be frequently.
My best option at this point was to move to Wix. I was happy to find that my progress was much more rapid. Not to say that building a website, no matter the platform, is entirely easy, but you can do it. At this point, many moons in, I have a substantial investment in my Wix store: the time spent building it and adding more than 100 products–each requiring a Photoshop improvement to some degree, newly written product descriptions and meta descriptions, keywords, and tags.
My site began to develop some traction earlier this year. I received a flurry of orders, but just as suddenly as they came, they stopped. I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Most of my pages were indexed by Google, I uploaded a spreadsheet of my products to Google Merchant Center, which will feature your products for free when space permits, and I was regularly posting to Pinterest and Instagram. In addition, my site was working properly, as evidenced by the first orders, which went through the order and fulfillment process smoothly. Wix collected the payments to my store and, later, remitted them to me. The only thing I could conclude was that I needed to do more to draw people to my site so I started researching ideas for blogs.
From the start of my time with the platform, there has been a constant wave of notifications (appearing upper-right on my work screen) from Wix Payments, an entity that handles credit-card payments, minus a roughly 3% fee. When I signed up with Wix, I could have chosen other options for payment processing, but I had so much to do that I didn’t want to spend time researching alternatives unless I absolutely had to, so I chose Wix Payments as the easiest route.
The initial notifications required that I submit a statement showing the account numbers and routing numbers of the account I wanted payouts sent to, even though I had already submitted this information. So I submitted it again. If I recall correctly, the notifications stopped for a while. Then I started seeing the same messages again, that Wix Payments needed documentation showing my account and routing numbers to be from the same account, to avoid having store purchases refunded to customers. Since I knew, without question, that they had this information, I assumed Wix had a technological glitch, and I started ignoring the messages. I figured I would wait until there were more purchases on my site, then call Wix if there were issues with my payouts, and ask if they could restrain their notifications. But the new purchases never came.
Recently I tried to make a purchase on my site, to test it, and I got a message saying that online payments could not be accepted. I had to sit for a minute to take in what I saw. Evidently Wix Payments had disarmed my account some time before, and I was completely unaware of it. Wix had always indicated that it would keep handling purchases regardless of anything else going on. I never thought that this could happen. And it has been a blow. Since my site is still relatively new, it’s hard to estimate the loss in sales, or loss in traffic, as Google likely detected I didn’t have a working checkout.
As it turns out, what the people at Wix Payments wanted was not matching account and routing numbers. They wanted something altogether different, something they never articulated, a seemingly arbitrary demand they used as a basis for disabling my online store and threatening the integrity of my newly formed business, one to which I had devoted so much time and effort. Through the customer-support person, Wix Payments relayed that the personal account I was using for payouts, the one accepted by Wix during my online setup, the one to which Wix sent earlier payouts, was no longer acceptable. I had to open a business account in my business name and, if I didn’t do this, I would have to re-register with Wix as a sole proprietor (Dame Cabbage is an LLC) and build my site all over again. I turned white. I realized Wix had cast me adrift in what was a serious failure to keep up its end of the deal. While I was paying monthly fees, it was hindering my progress.
Not that opening a business account is a big problem. It’s not. But Wix Payments operating as an authoritarian outpost within the mighty Wix corporation, issuing edicts and making arbitrary demands, is a huge problem. So is its unwillingness to be clear and transparent. The payouts people are so sure of their own power that they would never deign to answer simple questions or provide clear guidelines for what they are doing and what they require. It is so much easier for them to bend members to their will by playing wizard with their stores. Given that Wix Payments brought in $54 million of the company’s overall profits of $436 million during Q2 2024, it is not a sum to trifle with. Most profits come from its e-commerce platform. It’s hard to believe that the company is unaware of, or unwilling to bring under control, the wayward ways of Wix Payments.
In a subsequent chat with Customer Support, I asked the agent whether there had been a change in Wix policy regarding personal versus business accounts. I couldn’t get a straight answer. “If there has been a change, when did this change occur?” He tried to get these answers for me but the Payment Processing people wouldn’t give answers; they simply equivocated. “If there hasn’t been a change in Wix policy, why is Wix imposing this demand on me?” The information I received back was vague and hazy with no defining parameters. “Well the compliance people are constantly reviewing accounts and making changes.” “Sometimes our third-party payment service makes changes and we can’t do anything about that.” So I asked, “Are you referring your members to your subcontractors for explanations and guidelines?” Silence. “Are you saying that the Wix online boarding system can’t be relied upon? That if it accepts one type of bank account, the payouts department can override it?” Silence. Another unfortunate effect of the behavior of Wix Payments is that it sets up Customer-Service agents to fail. Wix has exceptionally good Customer Service. Agents are earnest and really try to help you, with what my experience tells me is a high rate of success. But if you’re dealing with a department that won’t tell you anything, that lies and obfuscates, then that is all you have to give subscribers. Wix Payments is the weakest link in the formidable Wix chain. The staff remind me of ladies who used to work in Citibank customer service in the 90s: they would just cuss you out and hang up.
My main goal was to get my site back in business as soon as possible. I opened a business account with Novo, the online banking service. From their site, I could download a bank letter. It showed that I had opened a business account for Dame Cabbage Collection, and it showed the account and routing numbers. I changed the bank information in my Wix account to reflect this and uploaded the letter to Wix payouts. I later received another notification (no shortage of those) saying there was a problem with my account. When I called Customer Support, the Wix Payments people relayed that they needed the document to show only my business name and for my personal name, as signatory, to be removed. Since my focus was on my store, and getting it out of this hostage situation, I just kept moving. I asked Novo for a custom letter giving Wix what it wanted, and was apologetic that Wix was intruding on their time, as well, with its unreasonable demands. Novo was reviewing my request when I learned of another way.
One of the big names in payment processing is Stripe, which essentially does the same thing as Wix Payments: acts as cashier for your store. I was aware that Wix Payments uses Stripe along with other payment processing services on its platform. But I didn’t realize I could use Stripe independent of Wix. I learned it from AI. With my new treasure map, I went into my store, and in Settings, under Accept Payments, I journeyed over hill and dale, three pages in, to find Stripe buried in the brush of the Wix landscape. In the end, all I had to do was Connect. I entered my business information, connected my checking accounts, and that was it. Just as quickly, Stripe credit card options appeared on my Checkout page, knocking off all signs of Wix Payments. I felt such relief. I was active again. And the only change to my store is that it will be more reliable and Wix Payments can no longer hit me with incessant notifications that neither inform nor clarify.
While I’m only one of over 200-million Wix users, the issues I’ve encountered are likely ones that creep and meander through the breadth of its membership. The larger issue is the contract, both spoken and unspoken, between Wix and its users. And in my case, without question, Wix failed to uphold its end, cutting my dinghy from the mothership, all in the narrow interest of a rogue element operating without structure or constraint.
The day after I switched to Stripe I got an email from a customer-service agent with Wix Payments. When I made the change, a Wix prompt asked why I was leaving, and I simply wrote, “unreasonable demands.” He said the matter had all been resolved, my store was active again, and he offered a blanket apology and instructions for how I could switch back to Wix Payments. His vacant words failed to rouse any magnanimity within me. I was just wondering how a bank letter that wasn’t acceptable yesterday was acceptable today. Did someone find a guideline? Or was this an arbitrary decision?
For the time being, I’m going to stay with what I have now–a Wix store and Stripe payment processing–as it simply doesn’t make sense to upend the situation. But E-Commerce is a rapidly changing industry and I will be watching with interest to what comes up on the horizon.
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