By default, you can only accept checks, which is, let's be honest, not very useful. Most e-commerce stores don't accept bank transfers or checks. The joy of e-commerce is receiving instant payment and fulfilling the order that very day.

The first three recipes in this chapter show you how to—set up three different payment gateways, all of which allow you to accept payment on the spot. They all do it in slightly different ways, and you may want to set up multiple options for your store. The first two gateways are included in WooCommerce. The third recipe is for Stripe, which has a very good reputation on the Web, it requires an extension from WooThemes.com.

Once you get payment options set up on your store, you may want to do a few more things. Adding Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to your site will make it more secure, tracking e-commerce transactions will make your Google Analytics reports more useful, and you can even add fees to certain gateways so that you can encourage users...