Carte Cultura (Carta della Cultura Giovane and Carta del Merito) is an Italian government initiative that provides eligible young adults with a voucher to spend on cultural products and services. If you run a WooCommerce store, accepting Carte Cultura payments can open your business to thousands of potential customers who want to use their cultural bonus online.

In this guide, we’ll walk through everything you need to know about accepting Carte Cultura payments on WooCommerce using the WC Carte Cultura plugin by ilGhera.

What is Carte Cultura?

Carte Cultura is the evolution of the 18app program, consisting of two vouchers:

• Carta della Cultura Giovane — for 18-year-old residents in Italy, providing a €500 voucher for cultural purchases
• Carta del Merito — for students who graduated with top honors (100 cum laude), also providing a €500 voucher

Both vouchers can be used to purchase cultural products such as books, museum tickets, concert tickets, cinema tickets, registered music, theater and dance performances, language courses, and more.

How WC Carte Cultura Works

The WC Carte Cultura plugin integrates directly with the Italian government’s Carte Cultura web service (SOAP API) to validate vouchers in real-time during checkout. Here’s how it works:

1. Certificate Setup — Upload your .pem certificate provided by the Carte Cultura system to authenticate your store
2. Product Category Mapping — Map your WooCommerce product categories to Carte Cultura’s allowed purchase categories (Formazione, Libri, Cinema, Teatro, Musica, etc.)
3. Checkout Integration — Customers enter their voucher code directly in the WooCommerce checkout page
4. Real-time Validation — The plugin checks the voucher’s validity, remaining credit, and product eligibility via the government SOAP web service
5. Payment Processing — On successful validation, the voucher amount is applied to the order. If the voucher covers the full amount, the order is completed. If not, the remaining balance can be paid with another payment method

Key Features

Certificate Management

The plugin handles the complete certificate lifecycle: upload your .pem certificate, generate certificate signing requests (.der), and manage certificate passwords. A built-in certificate checker validates expiry dates and notifies you before expiration.

Certificate Generation (Premium)

The premium version includes a built-in tool to generate the certificate signing request (.der file) required by the Carte Cultura system. Without a valid certificate, your store cannot authenticate with the government API — this is the step that enables your store to accept Carte Cultura vouchers. The plugin guides you through each step of the certificate creation process.

Sandbox Testing

Before going live, test the entire workflow with the built-in sandbox mode. The plugin includes a demo certificate that connects to the Carte Cultura test environment, letting you validate the checkout flow without real vouchers.

Product Eligibility

Configure which WooCommerce product categories are eligible for Carte Cultura purchases. The plugin validates every item in the cart against the voucher’s allowed purchase categories, preventing customers from using the voucher on ineligible products.

Partial Payments with Coupon Conversion

If the voucher amount doesn’t cover the entire order total, the plugin can automatically convert the voucher into a WooCommerce coupon for the remaining balance. This allows customers to combine Carte Cultura with other payment methods seamlessly.

Order Management

View voucher details directly in the order admin panel, including the voucher code, amount used, and validation status. The plugin also supports holding orders for manual review when needed.

Free vs Premium

The plugin is available in two versions:

• Free version — Available on WordPress.org, includes basic Carte Cultura payment gateway functionality with certificate management and product category mapping
• Premium version — Adds key features: certificate generation (.der files) to authenticate your store with the Carte Cultura system, coupon conversion for partial payments, order holding for manual review, priority support, and automatic updates via Plugin Update Checker

The Premium version starts at €9.98/month or €119.80/year.

Getting Started

1. Install and activate the WC Carte Cultura plugin from WordPress.org or upload the Premium version
2. Go to WooCommerce → WC Carte Cultura in your WordPress admin
3. Upload your .pem certificate and set the certificate password
4. Map your product categories to Carte Cultura purchase categories
5. Configure the gateway settings (enable sandbox for testing first)
6. Test the checkout flow with the sandbox environment
7. Switch to production mode when ready

Technical Requirements

• WordPress 4.0+
• WooCommerce 4.0+
• PHP SOAP extension enabled
• OpenSSL extension enabled
• A valid .pem certificate from the Carte Cultura system
• SSL certificate on your store (required for secure voucher transmission)

Conclusion

Accepting Carte Cultura payments on WooCommerce is straightforward with the WC Carte Cultura plugin. The plugin handles all the complexity of SOAP communication with the government web service, certificate management, and real-time voucher validation — letting you focus on selling cultural products.

Download WC Carte Cultura free — basic Carte Cultura payment gateway available on WordPress.org.
Get WC Carte Cultura Premium — includes certificate generation, coupon conversion, priority support and automatic updates.