So now that you know how to drive a massive amounts of traffic to your site, the next thing we want
to make sure, of course, is that our customers can actually buy our products.
And very soon I'm going to be showing you how that whole process works.
Before we do that, there are a couple of things that we need to set up.
And the first thing is to actually make sure that we can take payments on our store.
Now to make that happen, what we need is something called a payment provider.
So what is a payment provider?
Well, without knowing it, you've probably used a payment provider many, many, many times because
every single time you make an online payment, every single time you enter your credit card details
or similar, you are using a payment provider.
Now, at the simplest level, a payment provider provides that page, that page where you'll input your
actual card details.
But it does an awful lot more than that.
For example, it'll go away and actually check your credit card details to make sure that they're accurate
before proceeding with the payment.
It will, in effect, manage the entire payment process on your site so that you don't have to worry
about it.
And once it's taken that payment, it will then transfer it to a bank account of your choosing.
And this is where sometimes people get a little bit confused between a payment provider and a bank account.
So just to try and be 100% clear, the payment provider will actually take the payment on your site,
check everything looks great and if it does, it will then receive that payment.
And then later on, at some point it will transfer it into your actual bank account.
So I hope that's clear.
So in order to set up a payment provider on our site, you can see that I've come over here to Settings
and Payments, where you can see that it's suggesting that I set up a payment provider called Shopify
Payments, which is Shopify's own in-house payment system.
And also down here, I've got the option for PayPal.
Now, it's really important to understand that this page is going to look different depending on where
you are in the world.
And the reason for that is because different countries support different payment providers.
For example, with Shopify Payments, this is the list of countries where Shopify payments is currently
available.
So Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, etc. you know that I am in Portugal.
So Portugal is here on the list, which is why I'm seeing it.
And then down at the bottom here we have the United Kingdom and the United States.
And then if you're in any doubt about the payment providers available in your country, you can come
over to this page, shopify.com slash payment hyphen gateways.
And then simply type in your country into the box, and it will tell you immediately the payment providers
that are available to you.
Now having said that, in most cases, what you're going to find is a huge list of payment providers.
So the question becomes which one should I choose?
Well, once again, Shopify makes this easy because if I go back to the payments page, Shopify will
always prioritize what it considers to be the best payment providers for your store.
So in my case, it's Shopify Payments and also PayPal.
But just for completeness and so that you can see all of the other payment providers simply come down
to where you see this button here, add payment method.
Click on this and then click on Search by Provider.
And so just for example, if I put in here a little a up pops an enormous list of payment providers
that I could choose from.
And let's just say, for example, I wanted to use Globe Pay.
All I would need to do is to click on it, click once again on this little arrow over here, and then
go ahead and actually install it using the install button.
And that is going to be more or less the same process for any payment provider that you might choose.
And so once you've chosen your payment provider and you start going through the setup process, it's
here that things can become a little bit more complicated, because during that setup process, it's
probably going to ask you for your business details, which means at this point you need to set up a
business.
And for some people, that can be a little bit of a daunting process, but it really doesn't have to
be.
First of all, of course, I've been saying throughout the course you are setting up a real business
here, and therefore that means we need to register a business itself.
Now, just to be clear, what we're not talking about here is renting office space and having employees
and all that kind of stuff.
Nothing like that at all.
During the setup process, what it's probably going to ask you for is a business number and possibly
a business address.
Two things that you will get very easily once you set up your business.
And so therefore the question becomes, how do I actually set up my business.
And once again, this is potentially something that will vary enormously depending on where you live.
Also, please note I'm not qualified to give advice in this area and therefore it would be wrong for
me to do so.
And even if I could give advice, there's absolutely no way I could keep up with all the rules and regulations
in up to 200 countries at the same time.
But that said, this is where Google can help you out in.
Honestly.
So if I go over to Google, you can see here that I've put in set up online company UK as an example.
So for somebody who is living in the UK they would put this in set up online company UK and here are
the results.
They are absolutely loads of very inexpensive ways to create an online company.
So for your country simply replace UK clearly with wherever you're living.
So let me put Australia.
Which of course brings up a whole list of possibilities for setting up a business very quickly within
Australia.
Now, for most countries, that's going to be a relatively straightforward process.
But I am also aware that it is not the case for all countries.
In some countries, just a handful.
Perhaps it can be quite difficult to set up a company within the country itself.
And so therefore you might want to set up a company outside of your own country itself.
You might want to, for example, set up a business in the UK and to find out how to do that, just
come back up to your Google search bar here.
So where it says set up online company, I'm going to take out Australia and then put in UK non.
Resident.
And hit search.
And you can see here there are many, many services as well, providing company setups within the UK
for people who don't actually live there.
I could do the same for the US.
So if you wanted to set up a business in the US and you didn't live there, then I could substitute
UK for us.
Excuse me for the different caps, I could search on that and then when I scroll down here, there are
many, many services allowing non US residents to set up businesses.
And so in short there is a solution for everybody.
For many of you it will be very very straightforward.
For a few of you it's going to be a bit more difficult, but you will definitely be able to find a solution.
Okay.
So going back to admin, what I'm going to do is actually set up PayPal as my payment provider.
Now just before I do set up PayPal, I want to address a common question or perhaps a common misconception,
which is PayPal can also accept credit cards.
Many people seem to believe that if you have PayPal as your payment provider, then only people with
PayPal accounts can pay you.
But that's not the case.
PayPal also has the ability to take credit cards.
In addition to that, I'd also like to say that you can of course set up more than one payment provider,
and sometimes that can be a good solution.
So in this case here I could set up both Shopify Payments and PayPal if I chose to.
That said, in the beginning, and just to keep things simple, you might want to stick with just one
single payment provider.
So that's what I'm going to do.
I'm actually going to go ahead and set up PayPal.
As I said, you of course, will also need to set up your chosen payment provider.
And then I'll see you in a moment once I'm done.
Okay.
I'm back.
I've set up PayPal successfully and as you can now see, it says that it's active.
Meaning I'm good to go.
I can now accept payments in my store.
And so I sincerely hope that you've been able to successfully set up a payment provider for your store,
because now you really do have a fully functioning business.
This really is a very, very exciting moment.