Once you have your products in place, you need to make sure you have a way to take payments when people want to purchase those products.
To do this, you’re going to need a payment gateway. Essentially, this is a service that can take the credit card (or even bank account) information and process the payment for you. That way you don’t have to worry about storing and securing credit card information. They do that for you.
You’ve probably used several different payment gateways if you’ve purchased products online before.
The one you’re probably most familiar with is PayPal. It’s really easy to get started with and start taking payments. And because most people have used it before, your customers will likely trust it the most and not have second thoughts at checkout.
I personally use Stripe for any online payments. Like Paypal, it’s easy to set up and get started. And it integrates right into your website, so you don’t have to send customers off of your website to complete the checkout process.
Once you’ve decided what payment gateway you’re going to use, you will then need to sign up for that payment gateway.
EDD comes with built in support for basic Paypal and Stripe gateways for free. If you want to use those payment gateways, you can simply follow the instructions to connect your website to those services under “Settings” and the “Payment” tab and click the section for Paypal or Stripe.
There are also paid add ons for Stripe and Paypal gateways that you can purchase from the EDD website. If you want to go with one of those, you’ll need to install it after you purchase it and then follow the instructions to activate it and connect your website to the service.
It’s really a good idea to only use one payment gateway for your store to keep things simple for you and your customers.
Once that’s set up, we’re ready to move onto the next step — selecting a theme to make your online store look amazing.
