Skip the reCAPTCHA check for selected payment methods
Updated September 13, 2026
Payment Methods to Skip lets you exempt individual payment gateways from the reCAPTCHA check at checkout. Find it in the collapsed section under WooCommerce Forms at Settings › reCAPTCHA WooCommerce; click the heading to expand it.
Why a gateway might need skipping
Express checkout buttons such as PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Amazon Pay submit the order without the customer ever seeing the main checkout form. There is no rendered reCAPTCHA widget in that flow, so there is no token to verify, and the order is rejected with a “Please complete the reCAPTCHA” error.
Skipping those gateways lets the order through. You lose no real protection, because these flows are already authenticated by the payment provider.
Skip a payment method
- Go to Settings › reCAPTCHA WooCommerce.
- Under WooCommerce Forms, click Payment Methods to Skip to expand the section.
- Tick the box next to each gateway you want exempted. Each one is labelled “Skip:” followed by the gateway’s title.
- Click Save Changes.
Only gateways currently enabled and available in WooCommerce are listed. If a gateway is missing from the list, enable it first at WooCommerce › Settings › Payments.
Express payments are already handled automatically
Since version 1.4.7 the plugin detects WooPayments and Stripe express payments on the Checkout block and skips the reCAPTCHA check for them without any configuration. You do not need to tick those gateways manually for Apple Pay, Google Pay or Link to work.
The manual setting is still there for other gateways that behave the same way, and for cases where the automatic detection does not catch a particular integration.
What skipping actually does
The exemption is applied at verification time, not render time. The reCAPTCHA widget is still shown on the checkout page, because WooCommerce does not know which gateway the customer will end up using until they submit. What changes is that when the submitted payment method matches one on your skip list, the token check is bypassed entirely.
This means a customer who picks a skipped gateway can still see the box and tick it. That is harmless, but if the visual inconsistency matters to you, hiding the widget requires custom CSS or JavaScript rather than a plugin setting.
Do not skip your main gateway
Skipping a standard card gateway removes the protection from the vast majority of your orders, which defeats the point of installing the plugin. Only skip gateways that genuinely cannot present the challenge.