How to Start an Online Store in Pakistan: The Hosting and Payment Setup Guide

You know what you want to sell. 

You have researched what moves on Daraz, you have a supplier or a product in hand, and you have spent time imagining what the store could become. 

What is actually stopping you from launching is not the product, it is the setup.

Which platform do you use? 

What hosting do you actually need? 

And the question that paralyzes most Pakistani entrepreneurs before they even start: 

How do you collect payments from customers in Pakistan?

This guide answers those questions in order, without detours into niche selection advice you already do not need. 

By the end, you will know exactly how to start an online store in Pakistan and  get a store live. 

It also shows you how to configure it for every payment method Pakistani buyers actually use, and what it costs. 

The foundation comes first. Everything else builds on top of it.

Step 1: WooCommerce or Shopify? The Answer for Pakistan

For most Pakistani sellers, this decision comes down to two options.

The difference between them matters more in Pakistan than it does for sellers in Western markets, so it is worth getting clear before you buy anything.

Shopify charges in US dollars. 

The standard plan runs approximately $29 per month, currently over PKR 8,000 monthly before you have made a single sale. 

On top of that, it charges a transaction fee of 0.5% to 2% per order, unless you use Shopify Payments, which is not available to Pakistani merchants.

Connecting JazzCash or Easypaisa requires third-party workarounds that add complexity and often additional cost.

WooCommerce is free software that runs on WordPress. Your only cost is hosting, which for a Pakistani store starts from PKR 1,500 per year. 

You own your data, you pay zero platform transaction fees, and both JazzCash and Easypaisa have official WooCommerce plugins that integrate directly in minutes. 

This is why most serious independent stores in Pakistan run on WooCommerce.

Here is how the two platforms compare for the Pakistani market:

	WooCommerce	Shopify
Annual cost	Hosting only (~PKR 1,500/yr)	~PKR 96,000+/yr (USD billing)
Transaction fees	None	0.5–2% per sale
JazzCash / Easypaisa	Free plugins, direct integration	Third-party workarounds needed
Data ownership	Full — your server, your data	Hosted on Shopify’s servers
Best for	Most Pakistani stores	Sellers targeting international buyers

Step 2: Get Your Domain and Hosting

Your domain is your store address, something like yourbrand.pk or yourbrand.com. 

Your hosting is the server that makes that address load every time a customer visits.

For an online store, the quality of your hosting directly affects whether customers complete purchases or abandon their carts.

Pakistani buyers are predominantly mobile. 

Most are on 3G or 4G connections, often in areas with inconsistent network speeds. 

A store that takes five seconds to load loses the sale. 

For e-commerce specifically, your hosting needs to run on LiteSpeed servers. 

It can handle WooCommerce page requests significantly faster than older Apache setups, and NVMe SSD storage, which reads product data and images up to five times faster than standard drives.

Truehost Pakistan offers WooCommerce-ready hosting from PKR 1,500 per year, billed entirely in Pakistani rupees, no USD conversion, no surprise charges at renewal.

Every plan includes LiteSpeed servers, NVMe SSD storage, a free SSL certificate  which is mandatory for any store accepting payments, free daily backups, and 24/7 live support. 

Annual plans come with a free .pk domain.

WooCommerce can be installed in one click from the cPanel dashboard. Visit truehost.pk to see current plans and get started.

Once your hosting is active, connect your domain by updating its nameservers to point to your hosting provider. 

Truehost provides these values when you sign up, the process takes two minutes, and propagation completes within an hour.

Step 3: Install WooCommerce and Configure Your Store

Log in to cPanel, open the Softaculous one-click installer, and install WordPress. 

Once WordPress is live, install the free WooCommerce plugin directly from the WordPress plugin directory. 

The setup wizard covers the basics in a few screens.

Three settings to configure before you add a single product:

• Currency to PKR. Go to WooCommerce,Settings, General, Currency. Select Pakistani Rupee. Displaying prices in rupees is not just cosmetic, buyers in Pakistan distrust stores showing USD prices because they cannot instantly calculate what they are actually paying, and that friction kills conversions.

• Store location set to Pakistan. This determines which default shipping and tax configurations appear and which payment gateway options the plugin surfaces automatically. Get this right from the start so you don’t have to untangle settings later.

• Product pages built for Pakistani buyers. Each product needs a clear title, full description, real photos (not copied supplier images), PKR price, available sizes or variants, and delivery timeframe. Pakistani buyers will not send a message to ask about details they cannot find on the page. If the information is missing, they leave.

Step 4: Set Up Payments, The Part That Actually Determines If You Get Paid

This is where most guides either rush or miss the Pakistan-specific detail entirely. 

Payment setup here is genuinely different from what works in Europe or the US, and getting it wrong means customers cannot pay even when they want to. 

Here is exactly what to set up, in the order that matters.

Cash on Delivery (COD): Set This Up First

COD is the dominant payment method in Pakistan and is non-negotiable for any store selling to the general public.

The majority of Pakistani online buyers still prefer to pay cash upon delivery, particularly for first-time purchases from unfamiliar stores. 

WooCommerce has COD built in as a native payment option.

Enable it under WooCommerce then Settings then Payments then cash on Delivery. Physical cash collection is handled by your courier partner, more on that shortly.

JazzCash

JazzCash is Pakistan’s most widely used mobile wallet. 

Install the official JazzCash for WooCommerce plugin from the plugin directory, then apply for a JazzCash merchant account through their business portal. 

Approval typically takes two to five business days.

Once approved, you receive merchant credentials, a Merchant ID, password, and integrity salt, that you enter into the plugin settings.

Customers then pay directly from their JazzCash wallet or via USSD code at checkout. 

JazzCash charges merchants a transaction fee of 1% to 1.5%, which is clearly disclosed in their merchant agreement.

Easypaisa

Easypaisa is the second major mobile wallet in Pakistan and covers a significant portion of buyers that JazzCash does not. 

The setup process mirrors JazzCash: 

• Install the Easypaisa WooCommerce plugin

• Apply for an Easypaisa merchant account

• Connect your credentials once approved. 

Running both JazzCash and Easypaisa gives your store payment coverage across the overwhelming majority of Pakistani digital wallet users. 

Skipping either one means losing those buyers to competitors who have set it up.

Bank Transfer

Enable WooCommerce’s Direct Bank Transfer option and enter your business bank account details. 

Some buyers, especially those making larger purchases above PKR 5,000, prefer bank transfers because they feel more secure than digital wallets.

This costs nothing to set up and adds a trust signal: a visible bank account tells first-time buyers your store is a real business, not a pop-up operation.

International Payments

If your products appeal to the Pakistani diaspora or international buyers. 

Stripe and PayPal are the standard card payment options globally, but neither operates without friction for Pakistani-registered merchants. 

Check the current State Bank of Pakistan regulations and each gateway’s merchant requirements before attempting international payment setup. 

The rules update periodically. 

For stores focused entirely on domestic sales, COD, JazzCash, Easypaisa, and bank transfer cover the full range of what Pakistani buyers use.

Step 5: Activate SSL and the Trust Signals That Convert Visitors to Buyers

SSL is the padlock icon that appears in the browser address bar. 

Without it, every major browser flags your store as ‘Not Secure’, a warning that sends Pakistani buyers straight to a competitor, particularly as awareness of online fraud grows. 

On Truehost, SSL is included and activated automatically. 

Confirm it is working by checking that your store URL begins with https:// after setup.

Three things convert Pakistani visitors into buyers more reliably than anything else after SSL: 

• Dedicated returns and refunds policy page (buyers want to know they can send something back without a fight)

• Visible WhatsApp number so they can ask questions before committing

• Authentic product photos, real images of the actual product build trust that supplier stock photos never do.

You Are Ready to Launch

At the start of this guide, two things were unclear: which hosting to buy and how to handle payments in Pakistan. 

Both are now resolved. 

You have a platform (WooCommerce), hosting built for Pakistani e-commerce (Truehost, from PKR 1,500 per year on LiteSpeed with NVMe storage), a payment stack that covers every method Pakistani buyers actually use (COD, JazzCash, Easypaisa, bank transfer), and an SSL certificate that tells every visitor the store is legitimate.

The stores that succeed in Pakistan are not the ones that spent six months planning.

They are the ones who got a product live, took an order, learned from the process, and built from there. You do not need a perfect store on day one. You need a live one.

Go to truehost.pk, choose your hosting plan, install WooCommerce with one click, set up your payment methods, and publish your first product. 
The setup that felt complicated before you read this is straightforward now. Start today.