Before you launch an ecommerce business, you need to understand how your platform, your payment flow, and your legal obligations fit together. Choosing the right systems and partners for your business can help with compliance, user experience, and technical issues as you get started. You can ultimately design a positive customer experience that turns clicks into revenue.

Below, we’ll explain how to start an ecommerce business, from technical setup to tax registration.

What’s in this article?

• What are the necessary steps to launching an ecommerce business?
  
• How should you choose an ecommerce platform and payment provider?
  
• How do you handle payments and taxes legally?
  

What are the necessary steps to launching an ecommerce business?

There are a few steps that almost all new ecommerce businesses must take. Here’s what to expect.

Find a product people actually want

Start with a clear idea of what you’re selling and why it matters. Are you creating something original, reselling a product, or curating it? Ensure there’s demand by checking trends, doing keyword research, and reading forums or customer reviews—whatever helps you understand what people are already searching for but not finding easily.

Define your market and write a lean business plan

Know who you’re selling to and how you’ll stand out. Look at what similar businesses charge, how they attract customers, and where the gaps are. Use that information to outline a simple business plan: product pricing, go-to-market strategy, startup costs, and revenue projections.

Register your business and get the basics in place

Pick a business name, secure the domain, register your business, and get a Tax Identification Number (TIN), such as an Employer Identification Number (EIN) in the US. You’ll also want to create a business bank account. If you want to form a company in the US, tools like Stripe Atlas can help with incorporation, founder equity, and tax setup.

Choose an ecommerce platform and start building

Pick a platform that matches your technical skills and business needs. Customize the design, upload your products, and set up your most important pages (e.g., About, FAQs, Return Policy). Add a custom domain, preview everything on mobile, and polish your store.

Set up payments and shipping

Connect your store to a payment provider. Stripe Payments is widely supported across ecommerce platforms and makes this process straightforward for businesses. Then, determine how you’ll fulfill orders: self-shipping, third-party logistics, or digital delivery.

Test the full experience

Run through your checkout process. Test payments, emails, mobile usability, and cart flows. Assure that shipping rates are calculated correctly, stock counts update, and your confirmation pages are working. Fix any issues before you invite customers in.

Launch and adapt

Once your store is live, promote it with whatever channels make sense for your audience: social media, email, paid ads, or organic content. Then, pay attention to customer behavior. What are people clicking? Where are they dropping off? Keep refining your store based on real feedback.

How should you choose an ecommerce platform and payment provider?

Your platform and payment provider are the core infrastructure of your ecommerce business. They power every sale, shape your customer experience, and influence how much time and control you have behind the scenes. Picking the right ones early saves you from painful migrations later.

Here’s what you should consider when you pick an ecommerce platform and a payment provider.

Choosing an ecommerce platform

Start with two questions when you assess ecommerce platforms: how much control do you want over the code and infrastructure? And how much do you want to manage yourself?

Your options typically fall into two categories:

• Hosted platforms: Hosted platforms (e.g., Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce) offer built-in hosting, security, updates, and design. You can get started fast without needing to manage technical details, which is good for solo founders, small teams, nontechnical users, and businesses that prioritize speed over deep customization.

• Open-source platforms: Open-source platforms (e.g., WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce) give you full control over your storefront, code base, and hosting. You need to manage your own hosting, security patches, and maintenance, which makes them a good fit for teams with technical resources, stores with highly custom needs, and businesses that anticipate complex scaling.

When you compare options, consider the following:

• Built-in features: Can the platform handle what you need now (e.g., product variants, shipping rules, digital goods, subscription billing) or will you need third-party plug-ins? Does it support search engine optimization (SEO) tools, analytics, multilingual sites, or simple inventory management?

• Customization and flexibility: Hosted platforms typically have structured templates with guardrails. Open-source platforms let you build anything, but you’ll need to do more yourself.

• Integrations: Ensure your marketing, fulfillment, accounting, and analytics tools all plug in easily. Look for prebuilt integrations or strong support for application programming interfaces (APIs).

• Ease of use: If you manage the store day-to-day, the user interface matters. Try a demo or free trial and see how quickly you can add products, update pricing, or process a return.

• Performance and scalability: Will the platform load quickly when traffic peaks? Can it handle thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs) or international expansion? Some hosted platforms throttle resources on lower-tier plans, and some open-source platforms can slow down without careful fine-tuning.

• Design and mobile responsiveness: Choose a platform with high-quality templates and mobile-compatible themes. Smartphones account for a majority of global ecommerce traffic, and clunky mobile design can decrease conversion.

• Cost structure: Hosted platforms typically charge monthly, often with transaction fees layered on top. Open-source platforms might be more affordable, but you’ll have to pay for hosting, developers, and plug-ins. Watch for hidden costs—for example, a platform might add a fee on top of your payment provider unless you use its in-house solution.

Choosing a payment provider

Your payment provider needs to protect your margins, maintain compliance, and create a safe, reliable, and convenient experience for your customers. Here’s what to look for as you consider your options.

Payment methods

At a minimum, your provider should accept all major credit and debit cards. Ideally, it should also accept digital wallets (e.g., Apple Pay, Google Pay), local payment methods (e.g., FPX in Malaysia, Boleto in Brazil), and buy now, pay later (BNPL) options.

The broader the coverage, the better your chances are of converting international customers or mobile shoppers. Stripe supports more than 135 currencies and more than 100 payment methods with a single integration.

Global support

Even if you’re starting with a local business, it’s smart to choose a provider that can scale with you across currencies, regions, and local tax requirements. Stripe automatically handles currency conversion and localizes checkout for buyers, which makes it easier to expand internationally when you’re ready.

Fraud prevention and security

Your provider should be PCI compliant and handle encryption, tokenization, and risk analysis. By default, Stripe includes fraud tools such as Stripe Radar, which uses data from millions of businesses to help identify risky transactions.

Fees and transparency

You’ll typically pay your provider a percentage of each transaction. Watch for:

• Additional fees for international cards or currency conversion

• Platform fees (especially if your ecommerce platform penalizes third-party processors)

• Chargeback fees

• Monthly minimums or payout fees

Stripe uses a transparent fee structure with no setup fees or monthly charges, which helps keep margins predictable.

Integration and developer support

If you’re on a hosted platform, look for prebuilt integrations. Stripe integrates with most major platforms, often with a single-click setup. If you’re building a custom site, check the docs. Stripe’s developer-friendly API comes with strong software development kits (SDKs) and detailed guides.

Customer experience

The payment experience can affect conversion and retention. Look for:

• Mobile-compatible forms

• Express checkout options

• Clear error handling and form validation

• A checkout that keeps users on your domain or uses a hosted page with built-in security features such as Stripe Checkout

Payout speed and flexibility

Cash flow is important, especially early on. Find out how often you’ll get paid (e.g., daily, weekly, rolling), how quickly transactions settle, and whether there are delays for new accounts. Stripe offers daily payouts in many countries, with manual options available.

How do you handle payments and taxes legally?

Once you accept payments online, you’re operating inside a regulated system. That means you must handle customer payments securely, stay compliant with financial regulations, and collect the right taxes.

Here’s what you should focus on.

Know Your Customer (KYC) and verification

Before you can process payments, you’ll need to verify your business identity. This is part of the KYC regulations required by payment networks and global Anti-Money Laundering laws.

Your payment provider will walk you through this as part of onboarding. Expect to provide your:

• Legal business name

• Business tax ID

• Business address and phone number

• Personal ID (e.g., a driver’s license or passport)

• Business bank account for payouts

This is built into the account setup process for providers like Stripe. Your account won’t be fully active until it’s complete.

Restricted and high-risk products

Payment processors and card networks have rules about what you’re allowed to sell. Some categories (e.g., illegal drugs) are outright banned. Others are classified as high-risk and require special underwriting, higher fees, or additional scrutiny.

If you’re unsure where your product falls, check your provider’s policy on restricted businesses before you launch. You don’t want to get partway through launch only to discover that your category violates acceptable use policies. In the worst-case scenario, your account could be frozen midsale.

Customer data and privacy laws

In many jurisdictions, if you collect customer names, email addresses, shipping addresses, or any other personally identifiable information, you need a published privacy policy.

In the US, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) gives customers the right to see, delete, or opt out of the sale of their personal data. Similar laws exist in Virginia, Colorado, and other states.

If your business sells to customers in the EU or UK, it’s subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). That means:

• You must state what data you collect and why

• You need consent to use nonessential cookies

• Customers must be able to request access to or the deletion of their data

Stripe uses tokenization on card data and enables data exports, but you’re still responsible for how you handle customer data on your own systems.

US sales tax

The US doesn’t have a national sales tax. Instead, each state (and sometimes counties and cities) sets its own rules. If you have “nexus” in a state—either physical or economic—you’re required to register, collect, and remit sales tax in that state. Physical nexus means you have a warehouse, office, employee, or inventory in the state, and economic nexus means you exceed a revenue or transaction threshold in that state. A few states (e.g., Delaware, Oregon, Montana) don’t charge sales tax at all.

You can’t legally collect tax in a state unless you’re registered with the tax authority there. To remain compliant:

• Monitor where you have nexus

• Register with the state tax authority

• Configure your checkout to collect the correct rate

• File and remit on time—usually monthly, quarterly, or annually, depending on volume

Specific tax rules vary by product and local jurisdiction and can also change over time. For example, clothing is tax-exempt in some states but taxed in others. States regularly update thresholds, add or remove exemptions, or change deadlines.

Stripe Tax automates much of this by monitoring where you’re approaching nexus thresholds, calculating the correct rate based on product type and buyer location, keeping tax rates up-to-date, and generating reports for filing.

Value-added tax (VAT) and goods and services tax (GST)

Most countries charge VAT or GST on ecommerce transactions. If you sell goods or services to customers in the EU, UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, for example, you might be required to register and collect tax, even without a physical presence.

Each country has different rules, rates, and thresholds for when registration is required. In some, it’s required on your first sale. As with US sales tax, the more you sell internationally, the more tax jurisdictions you might need to register in. The EU uses a system called the VAT One Stop Shop (VAT OSS), which lets you register in one EU country and collect VAT across the region.

Stripe Tax supports VAT and GST in dozens of countries. It can determine your customer’s precise location, localize tax collection, and generate detailed tax reports.

You can’t fix tax and payment compliance retroactively without cost. If you collect tax without registering, you’re breaking the law. If you don’t collect tax when you should, you might owe it out of pocket. If you process payments without understanding the rules, your account might get flagged or frozen. The goal is to stay compliant, avoid fines, and build systems that scale. With the right setup—and the right tools—these responsibilities become background processes.