Payments via Polar now works with Easy Digital Downloads
We make Payments via Polar for EDD (Merchant-of-record payment gateway for Easy Digital Downloads), which this article mentions where it does a step for you. Every figure here is linked to its source and dated, and we've said where other tools are a better fit.
Payments via Polar for Easy Digital Downloads adds Polar as a payment gateway to Easy Digital Downloads (EDD). Polar is a merchant of record: it sells your downloads to your customers on your behalf, charges them, works out and files sales tax and VAT in every country, and pays you out. Your downloads, orders and customers stay in EDD.
It takes one-time payments. EDD Recurring Payments subscriptions aren’t supported yet; they’re next.
Who it’s for
- EDD stores selling to buyers abroad that would rather not register for VAT or sales tax in every country they sell to. With a merchant of record, that’s Polar’s job, not yours.
- Sellers where Stripe doesn’t take businesses. Polar pays out to many countries that can’t open a normal Stripe account. Stripe isn’t available in your country? has the country check.
What the shopper sees
The shopper fills in EDD’s checkout as usual, then pays on Polar’s secure page, by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and more, and comes back to EDD’s confirmation page with their receipt and files. Turn on Embedded checkout and Polar opens in a window over your checkout page instead, so they never leave your site.
Polar charges the EDD order total, so EDD’s discount codes and fees carry through. A download bought on its own shows under its own name on Polar’s page and receipt.
What it checks
- An order completes only for its exact amount. If Polar collected anything other than the order total, the order goes on hold with a note giving both amounts, instead of handing out the files.
- The confirmation page asks Polar first, so a shopper who has just paid sees their receipt even before Polar’s webhook arrives. A check 15 minutes later completes anything both missed.
- Refunds go both ways. Refund in EDD with “Refund in Polar” ticked, or refund in Polar’s dashboard and EDD records it, for the whole order or exactly one item.
- Webhooks are checked against Polar’s signature, and EDD’s test mode uses your Polar sandbox, with each order tied to the organization it was paid in.
What it doesn’t do yet
- Subscriptions. One-time payments only, for now.
- EDD Software Licensing hasn’t been tested. It’s a paid add-on. Orders complete the way they do with EDD’s own gateways, so keys should be issued, but we haven’t run it. Check it on a test purchase first.
- Split refunds made in Polar, anything other than the whole order or one item’s price, are noted on the order for you to record.
Because it does less than the WooCommerce version for now, it’s priced lower while it takes one-time payments only.
How it was tested
The plugin passes its own test suites: 82 unit tests, and 41 integration tests run against a real WordPress and EDD, on both EDD 3.3.7 and 3.7.2. 23 end-to-end checks run over real HTTP, with Polar replaced by a stand-in. WordPress’s Plugin Check reports nothing beyond the expected notice about updates coming from our store.
Not tested yet: a payment through a real Polar account, real webhooks from Polar, and Polar’s embedded window with real credentials. They need live Polar organizations, and they’re the first things to try on your own store in test mode. Its WooCommerce sibling, Payments via Polar, is built the same way and takes real payments on our own store.
Setting it up
- Create an Organization Access Token in Polar, and another in Polar’s sandbox.
- Paste both in Downloads › Settings › Payments › Polar, and click Set up in Polar to add the webhook.
- Switch Polar on under Active Gateways, and turn off EDD’s own taxes.
- Take a test purchase in EDD’s test mode, then switch test mode off.
The full guide, with screenshots, is in the setup docs.