The Italian government’s Carta della Cultura program provides eligible low-income families with a €100 voucher to spend on books and other cultural products. If you run a WooCommerce store selling books, accepting Carta della Cultura payments means reaching customers with government-backed purchasing power.

This guide walks through how the WC Carta della Cultura plugin by ilGhera works and how to set it up on your WooCommerce store.

What is Carta della Cultura?

Carta della Cultura is an Italian government initiative that provides a €100 voucher to families that meet specific low-income criteria (ISEE means-testing). Recipients can use the voucher to purchase books and other eligible cultural products at participating merchants. The program is managed through the SOGEI system at cartadellacultura.it.

For WooCommerce store owners selling books and cultural products, becoming a participating merchant opens your store to customers who can pay with their government-issued vouchers — validated in real time at checkout.

How WC Carta della Cultura Works

The plugin integrates with the Italian government’s SOGEI web service via SOAP API to validate vouchers in real time during checkout. The workflow is:

1. Certificate Setup — Upload your .pem certificate to authenticate your store with the SOGEI web service
2. Product Category Mapping — Map your WooCommerce product categories to the categories allowed under Carta della Cultura
3. ISBN Configuration — Configure how the plugin retrieves ISBN numbers from your products (WooCommerce Global Unique ID, custom meta field, or product attribute)
4. Checkout Integration — Customers enter their voucher code directly at checkout
5. Real-time Validation — The plugin validates the voucher’s validity, remaining credit, and product eligibility via SOGEI
6. ISBN Pre-validation — Before confirming the voucher with SOGEI, the plugin checks that all products have valid ISBNs, preventing voucher consumption when data is incomplete
7. Payment Processing — On successful validation, the voucher amount is applied to the order

Key Features

ISBN Validation System

Books sold under Carta della Cultura require valid ISBN-13 codes. The plugin:

• Retrieves ISBNs from multiple sources: the native WooCommerce Global Unique ID field, custom meta fields, or product attributes
• Validates ISBN-13 format before sending data to SOGEI
• Blocks voucher consumption when products lack valid ISBNs (safeguard added in version 1.0.4)
• Supports ISBN retrieval from product variations with fallback to the parent product

Manual ISBN Submission Metabox

If a voucher was consumed but the ISBNs weren’t transmitted to SOGEI correctly, the plugin adds an order metabox that lets you manually resend ISBNs — without needing to contact support.

Certificate Management

Upload your .pem certificate and generate certificate signing requests (.der) directly from the WordPress admin. The plugin handles the complete certificate lifecycle required to communicate with SOGEI.

Coupon Conversion for Partial Payments

When the voucher amount doesn’t cover the full order total, the plugin automatically converts the voucher into a WooCommerce coupon for the remaining balance — letting customers combine Carta della Cultura with other payment methods at checkout.

Free vs Premium

• Free version — Available on WordPress.org: basic Carta della Cultura payment gateway, certificate upload (.pem), and product category mapping
• Premium version — Adds certificate generation (.der), ISBN validation system, manual ISBN submission metabox, coupon conversion for partial payments, order holding for manual review, priority support, and automatic updates

Getting Started

1. Install and activate WC Carta della Cultura from WordPress.org (free) or upload the Premium version
2. Go to WooCommerce → Carta della Cultura in your WordPress admin
3. Upload your .pem certificate and set the certificate password
4. Configure the ISBN source (recommended: native WooCommerce Global Unique ID)
5. Map your product categories to the Carta della Cultura purchase categories
6. Test the checkout flow with the sandbox environment
7. Switch to production mode when ready

Technical Requirements

• WordPress 5.0+
• WooCommerce 4.0+
• PHP SOAP extension enabled
• OpenSSL extension enabled
• A valid .pem certificate from the Carta della Cultura system
• SSL certificate on your store

Conclusion

Accepting Carta della Cultura payments on WooCommerce is straightforward with the WC Carta della Cultura plugin. It handles SOAP communication with the SOGEI web service, certificate management, ISBN validation, and real-time voucher checking — so you can focus on selling books and cultural products to eligible families.

Ready to accept Carta della Cultura payments? Try the free version on WordPress.org to get started, then upgrade to WC Carta della Cultura — Premium for ISBN validation, certificate generation, partial payment support, and automatic updates.