Online payment provider 2Checkout, and WooThemes, maker of the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, today announced a partnership to offer 2Checkout's online payment technology to WooCommerce users, according to a press release. The integration allows WooCommerce merchants in nearly 200 countries to accept payments in 26 currencies, as well as increases conversion rates over a standard hosted form.

WooThemes said in the announcement its for WordPress powers nearly 18 percent of all e-commerce websites, with 381,000 active online stores worldwide. WooCommerce users can integrate 2Checkout's payment form, which overlays on the merchant's website without redirecting visitors to a separate page and results in as much as a 20 percent increase in conversion rates over redirects to a standalone hosted payment form, according to the press release. From there, 2Checkout's payment form maintains the branded look and feel of the merchant's website design, and adapts the checkout page responsively for smartphones and tablets.

"2Checkout has been a pivotal product for WooCommerce merchants in enabling customers to check out in a variety of currencies. 2Checkout has changed the payments landscape for sellers across the globe. We are truly excited to present our customer base with the latest integration for 2Checkout built by the ninjas at WooThemes," said head of business development at WooThemes Joel Bronkowski.

With this integration, 2Checkout said the majority of a merchant's PCI compliance burden is alleviated as cardholder data is never held on the merchant's servers. Advanced fraud protection is included at no additional cost to minimize merchant losses by identifying fraudulent transactions by analyzing over 300 risk variables, according to the press release.