Card Payments for Online Stores in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Monri, WSPay and Stripe

The short answer: an online store registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina accepts cards through a payment gateway, in practice most often Monri or WSPay, together with a contract with an acquiring bank, the bank that actually pays the money into your account. Stripe is not available to businesses registered in BiH, because the country is not on Stripe’s list of supported countries. A company registered in a country Stripe does support can use it and still sell to customers in BiH.

Technically, switching cards on is the easy part. The time goes on paperwork between your company, the bank and the provider, and on requirements your site must meet first. We checked every provider page below in October 2026.

Two contracts: the bank and the gateway

Accepting cards online rests on two relationships:

• The acquiring bank accepts card payments on your behalf and agrees with you the commission, instalment options and how quickly money reaches your account.
• The payment gateway, such as Monri or WSPay, is the technical service between your store and the bank: the payment form, 3-D Secure, the bank connection and an admin panel for refunds.

Monri and WSPay both say they do not pay out the money and cannot see when it will reach your account. Costs therefore come from two places, the gateway’s fee and the bank’s commission, so ask for both in writing.

3-D Secure and your web address

3-D Secure is the card industry’s protocol for confirming that the person paying is the cardholder. According to EMVCo, the store sends transaction and device data to the card issuer; many purchases are approved without an extra step, and for riskier ones the issuer may ask for further authentication, such as a code or a confirmation in the bank’s app.

One consequence surprises people: when a store is activated, its web address is registered with Mastercard and Visa. Monri explains that one domain means one point of sale, and that 3-D Secure will reject payment requests from an address that was not registered, with subdomains as the exception, up to five per shop ID. Choose your final domain before you apply; a second store on another domain needs its own application.

PCI DSS: keep card data off your server

PCI DSS is the card industry’s security standard for anyone who handles card data. The easiest way to keep its scope small is never to touch card numbers: the customer types them into the gateway’s form, on the gateway’s own page after a redirect or embedded in your checkout. Monri and WSPay both state that they are PCI DSS Level 1 certified, and WSPay’s rules forbid stores from saving card data unless they are certified themselves.

The PCI Security Standards Council says merchants whose payment pages come entirely from a compliant provider may use the shortest self-assessment questionnaire, SAQ A. Since April 2025, a store that embeds the provider’s form in an iframe must also confirm that its pages are protected against malicious scripts, while a full redirect is not subject to that criterion, as the Council’s FAQ on SAQ A eligibility explains. Your acquiring bank decides which questionnaire applies.

Monri

Monri is a card payments and point-of-sale company with a site for Bosnia and Herzegovina and others for Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, North Macedonia and Romania. For online stores in BiH it accepts Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, Diners and American Express, offers redirect, pop-up and custom payment forms and mobile SDKs, and has plugins for WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, PrestaShop and Shopware.

Monri’s online payments page describes onboarding in four steps: choose one or more acquiring banks, integrate and test at no extra cost, sign contracts with Monri and the bank, and start taking payments. After your online request, Monri sends the integration details and the bank’s forms, which you send to the bank directly. The bank then contacts you with a contract proposal and agrees the commission, instalments and payout terms. Before you go live, Monri tests the payment form and reviews your pages. No timeline is given for these steps.

Monri publishes its gateway prices for BiH. When we checked, there were three packages, with a monthly fee of 59 KM (Launch), 69 KM (Boost) or 119 KM (Advance) up to a monthly volume of 11,800, 13,800 or 23,800 KM; above that volume, the fixed fee is replaced by 0.50% per transaction. Boost and Advance add instalments for almost all cards on the BiH market, tokenisation for saved cards, and Apple Pay and Google Pay. The bank’s commission on cards is agreed separately with the bank.

WSPay

WSPay is a payment gateway that is now part of the Monri group, but it is still offered as a separate product, with its own BiH site, onboarding and price list. It shows Visa, Mastercard, Maestro and American Express.

According to WSPay’s FAQ, you need a contract with at least one acquiring bank, and it names two for online card acceptance in BiH: Intesa Sanpaolo Banka BiH and UniCredit Bank BiH. You start with an inquiry, and WSPay replies with documents and instructions. Your store must already exist and show what you sell, at what price and on what terms. Activation is possible at the earliest 48–72 hours after the bank delivers its data, because each store is registered with Mastercard globally.

Can a business in BiH use Stripe?

Not at the moment. Stripe’s global availability page lists the countries where it supports businesses, among them every EU member state, the UK, Switzerland and the US. Bosnia and Herzegovina is not on the list, and for businesses outside the supported countries the page notes that payments are not supported yet.

Some founders set up a company in a supported country, for example a US company through Stripe Atlas, and take payments through it. That is a tax and legal decision, not a payment setting: the company that takes the money is the one that sells, issues invoices and pays tax. Talk to an accountant first.

Selling into BiH from a company abroad

If your company is registered in a country Stripe supports, Stripe says you can sell to customers anywhere in the world, BiH included. For an account in the European Economic Area, cards issued in BiH are not on Stripe’s list of EEA cards, so the EEA card rate does not apply to them. Monri and WSPay also operate outside BiH, so they are worth asking too. If you ship goods, tell customers that parcels from abroad can be subject to customs duty and import VAT, which the Indirect Taxation Authority says the buyer pays.

Refunds and chargebacks

Refunds are made in the gateway’s admin panel, in full or in part, and Monri includes them in every package. When the money reaches the customer depends on the bank that issued their card; WSPay notes that it can take up to 14 days in some cases. Consumer law sets the deadline for refunding a customer who withdraws, as our article on starting an online store in BiH explains.

A chargeback is different: the cardholder disputes a payment with their own bank, which asks you for evidence through the acquirer. Keep the order details, the accepted terms, proof of delivery and your correspondence with the customer. Under both the state and the RS consumer protection laws, a customer whose card was misused in a distance purchase is entitled to a full refund.

What to prepare before you apply

WSPay publishes a list of the data an online store must display and says that without it card acceptance cannot be contracted or activated. It works as a checklist for any provider:

• your company’s full name, register and registration number, VAT number if you have one, address, and contact details with an email address
• for every product, its name, main characteristics and retail price including all taxes
• whether delivery and other costs are included in the price
• terms of sale: ordering steps, payment methods, delivery method, time and cost, warranty, withdrawal, complaints and refunds
• a privacy statement explaining how customer data is protected
• a currency conversion statement, if prices are shown in a foreign currency
• the logos of the accepted cards, the 3-D Secure programmes and the gateway

Have the store running on its final domain with HTTPS, decide which bank you will use, and apply in the first weeks of the build rather than the last.

How we handle payments

We connect Stripe, Monri and WSPay, alongside cash on delivery and bank transfer. We do not sell payment services: the contracts are between your company, the bank and the provider, in your company’s name, and card fees go to them, not to us. We handle the integration and the pages providers check, and before launch we test every payment method end to end, including a refund.

Our custom online stores start from €3,000. After a short call you receive the final price and timeline in writing; the price does not change and nothing is added on top. See online store development, our guide to what an online store costs or the cost calculator.

This article is general information based on providers’ and authorities’ own pages, checked in October 2026, not legal, tax or financial advice. Providers and banks change their terms and prices, so confirm everything with them.