Easy Digital Downloads quickstart

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) sells digital products from WordPress. The OpenReceive plugin, the same one WooCommerce stores use, adds a payment gateway to it: the customer pays with Bitcoin over Lightning, straight into your own wallet. With a swap provider, the same checkout also takes USDT, USDC, SOL and ETH, which the provider converts to BTC over Lightning into the same wallet.

EDD keeps owning products, prices, customers, orders and download access. The customer picks the OpenReceive method at EDD’s checkout. EDD records a pending order, and its purchase confirmation page shows the checkout until the order is paid. Once the wallet reports the payment, EDD completes the order, sends its receipt and opens the downloads, as it does for any other gateway.

Requirements: WordPress 6.6+, Easy Digital Downloads 3+, 64-bit PHP 8.2+ with GMP and sodium, and MySQL 8 or MariaDB 10.5+. When you activate the plugin, it creates tables for payment attempts in your existing WordPress database. The plugin works with EDD alone, with WooCommerce alone, or with both on one site.

Install the plugin

In Plugins → Add New, search for OpenReceive, then install and activate it. With WP-CLI, run wp plugin install openreceive --activate.

Each GitHub release also attaches the plugin as a ZIP, for a site that cannot reach WordPress.org: openreceive-wordpress-0.4.28.zip. Install it through Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin. The GitHub source-code ZIP is not an installable plugin.

Enable GMP in both PHP runtimes

GMP is required by the bundled elliptic-curve code, in the web PHP and in the PHP that runs WP-CLI. If the plugin is not running, the Plugins screen says which requirement is missing. On managed hosting, ask the host to enable GMP and sodium; WordPress hosting requirements lists what common hosts offer. On Debian or Ubuntu, install the package for your PHP version, such as php8.2-gmp, and restart that PHP.

Many Docker sites run the official images straight from Compose, for example image: wordpress:php8.2-apache and image: wordpress:cli-php8.2, and both lack GMP. Add two Dockerfiles next to compose.yml, keeping your tags:

# wordpress.Dockerfile
FROM wordpress:php8.2-apache
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends libgmp-dev \
    && docker-php-ext-install gmp \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# wp-cli.Dockerfile
FROM wordpress:cli-php8.2
USER root
RUN apk add --no-cache gmp \
    && apk add --no-cache --virtual .gmp-build $PHPIZE_DEPS gmp-dev \
    && docker-php-ext-install gmp \
    && apk del .gmp-build
USER www-data

Replace each service’s image: line with a build: key, such as build: { context: ., dockerfile: wordpress.Dockerfile }, then run docker compose build wordpress cli and docker compose up -d wordpress. Use your own service names, and add no other service.

Configure the wallet

You need a receive-only NWC code: a Nostr Wallet Connect code that can create invoices and read payments but cannot spend. The plugin refuses a code that can spend.

  1. Open Downloads → Settings → Payments → OpenReceive.
  2. Paste the code into NWC code and save. To accept stablecoins too, paste a swap provider code into Lightning Swap Connect code.
  3. Open Payments → General, tick OpenReceive (Bitcoin Lightning) under Active Gateways, and save.

When you save, the plugin checks that the wallet can receive, then stores the codes encrypted with keys derived from WordPress’s authentication keys. The fields never show a saved code; they say only whether one is set. EDD’s own settings never hold a code. The settings page ends with the OpenReceive Doctor, the same checks as wp openreceive doctor.

With WP-CLI, pipe each code in from your secret manager or a protected file, never a code typed into the command:

wp openreceive configure --nwc-uri=- < /secure/path/wallet-code
wp openreceive configure --lsc-uri-primary=- < /secure/path/swap-code
wp openreceive configure --enable
wp openreceive doctor

--enable adds OpenReceive to EDD’s active gateways (and turns it on in WooCommerce, when that runs too). Omit the swap command for Bitcoin-only checkout. doctor checks the store, GMP and sodium, each code as set or unset (never its value), the tables, the wallet, the price feed for the store currency, each swap provider and the scheduled pass, and exits nonzero when a check fails. Codes set as OPENRECEIVE_NWC_URI or OPENRECEIVE_LSC_URI_PRIMARY constants in wp-config.php win over saved ones.

Check it

Make a Lightning invoice through the same route the purchase confirmation page uses, for a new pending test order:

wp openreceive test-invoice --new
wp openreceive test-invoice edd-<order id>

--new orders your first published download, billed to the first administrator; a pending order sends no email. To use an order that already exists, pass its id with the edd- prefix. It prints the amount in sats, the Lightning invoice and the receipt page, then each method the checkout offers: Bitcoin Lightning, and each swap asset with its network and whether it is available for this amount. A small order is often below a swap provider’s minimum; that is the amount, not a fault. The receipt page shows the checkout to the order’s customer, or to you while you are signed in to WordPress as the shop manager. Delete the test order under Downloads → Orders when you are done.

How a payment works

  1. The customer picks the OpenReceive method at checkout and presses Purchase. EDD records a pending order and opens its purchase confirmation page, which shows the checkout.
  2. The plugin charges the order’s total in the store currency, converted to sats at the current BTC price. Only the customer, signed in, or the browser EDD showed the receipt to (a guest included), can make or follow the order’s payment.
  3. Once the wallet reports the payment, the plugin records it in the same database transaction that settles it. Right after, EDD completes the order with the payment hash as its transaction id, sends the receipt and opens the downloads. If that step is interrupted, the next request or scheduled pass finishes it.
  4. The page reloads to the completed receipt.

The checkout asks the wallet while the page is open. If the customer closes it before the payment settles, a pass every minute on Action Scheduler (which EDD bundles) finds the payment. WordPress runs scheduled work on page visits, so on a quiet store a system cron for WordPress settles such orders sooner. wp openreceive reconcile runs one pass by hand.

Refunds and removal

The receive-only wallet cannot send refunds. Send a refund from your own wallet, then record it in EDD. A customer whose swap deposit never converted reclaims it from the same order’s purchase confirmation page. If you turn on swaps, you commit to keeping that page available. See swap refunds.

Deactivating or deleting the plugin keeps its two payment tables: they are a record of payments received. (On a site that also runs WooCommerce, its Remove data on uninstall setting drops them on deletion.) EDD orders are always kept.

Tested, and not tested

Tested on 2026-10-16 with WordPress 7.1 and Easy Digital Downloads 3.7.2, alone and next to WooCommerce 11.1, on MySQL 8, with a test wallet and a test swap provider: install from the built ZIP, configure from stdin and from EDD’s settings page, the doctor, test-invoice --new, and a signed-in customer and a guest paying by Lightning and by USDT on Solana in Chromium, after which the order reads Completed. Another customer and a visitor were refused. The repository’s WordPress CI buys a download as a guest on every push.

Not tested: EDD’s subscriptions (Recurring Payments), multisite, and stores whose purchase confirmation page lacks EDD’s receipt block or shortcode. Lightning cannot pull a payment, so OpenReceive takes no subscription renewals.

Next