WooCommerce Tutorial: how to accept stablecoin payments (USDT and USDC) step by step from scratch

You have two paths depending on your hosting:

Option A — One-click installer (recommended for beginners):

1. Log into your hosting panel (cPanel, Hostinger hPanel, SiteGround Site Tools, etc.).
2. Find the "Auto Installer", "Softaculous Apps Installer" or "Install WordPress" section.
3. Pick your domain, set an admin user (don't use literal admin — bots will hit it first), a strong password and a recovery email.
4. Wait 1–2 minutes and visit https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin.

Option B — Manual install (when your host has no auto-installer):

# 1. Download the latest version
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzf latest.tar.gz
 
# 2. Upload the contents of wordpress/ into public_html/ via FTP/SFTP
#    (your FTP client: FileZilla, Cyberduck, etc.)
 
# 3. Create the database from phpMyAdmin:
#    - Name: wp_store
#    - User: wp_user
#    - Password: a long, random one
 
# 4. Visit https://yourdomain.com and complete the WordPress wizard
#    pasting the database details.

Once inside wp-admin:

• Go to Settings > General and confirm the site URL starts with https://.
• Go to Settings > Permalinks and pick "Post name". This is essential for SEO and for the webhook URL (/wp-json/tdp/v1/webhook) to respond properly.

WooCommerce is the most-used e-commerce plugin in the world (it powers ~30% of all online stores). It is free, maintained by Automattic, and has the largest extension ecosystem.

1. In wp-admin go to Plugins > Add new.
2. Search for WooCommerce (author: Automattic).
3. Hit Install now and then Activate.
4. The Setup Wizard opens. Walk through:
   • Store details: country, address, contact email.
   • Industry: pick whatever best describes your products.
   • Product types: physical, digital, subscriptions, etc.
   • Business details: approximate number of products and whether you sell on another platform.
   • Theme: you can keep your current WordPress theme; Storefront and Astra are the lightest and most compatible.

After the wizard, go to WooCommerce > Settings > General and confirm:

Now the crypto side. You will register your business with TronDealer to obtain an API key — the credential the WordPress plugin uses to request deposit addresses.

1. Visit https://trondealer.com/en/onboard (public sign-up, no KYC to start).

2. Fill the form:

   • Business name: whatever you want it to read on internal records (not shown to the customer).
   • Email: use one you actually check, operational alerts will land there.
   • Payout method: how you want to receive the funds when the deposit addresses are swept.

   Payout method	Who it's for	TronDealer fee
   wallet	Merchant with their own wallet (Trust, MetaMask, Phantom, TronLink)	0.4% per transaction or $0.30 flat if the amount is below $10 USD
   qvapay	Merchant who wants to receive in USD/CUP/EUR via QvaPay	0% (free)
   zelle	Merchant with active Zelle in the US	Per QvaPay

3. If you picked wallet, set sweep_wallet_evm (your EVM address, e.g. 0xABC...), sweep_wallet_tron (Base58, e.g. TXX...) and sweep_wallet_sol (Base58 Solana). You only need to configure the networks you plan to enable in the plugin.

4. Solve the Cloudflare Turnstile captcha and hit Create account.

5. You land on the dashboard. In the top bar you will see your API key prefixed with td_ followed by 64 hex characters. Copy it to a password manager (1Password, Bitwarden) right now: this is the only time it is shown in full.

If you want to understand what each endpoint the plugin invokes does under the hood, check the 6-step API integration guide.

The plugin is distributed as a downloadable ZIP.

1. Download the latest version from the official plugin page (direct link to the GitHub release: github.com/qvapay/trondealer-woocommerce/releases). It will also be on the official WordPress.org directory soon.
2. In wp-admin go to Plugins > Add new > Upload plugin.
3. Select the trondealer-payments-vX.X.X.zip file and hit Install now.
4. When done, hit Activate plugin.

On activation, the plugin:

• Registers a payment gateway named Trondealer inside WooCommerce.
• Creates a REST endpoint at https://yourdomain.com/wp-json/tdp/v1/webhook that will receive the signed notifications from TronDealer.
• Schedules a WP-Cron fallback every 5 minutes that reconciles orders in case a webhook is missed during a brief site outage.

This is where the magic happens: in a single click the plugin authenticates against TronDealer and registers your webhook URL with an automatically generated HMAC secret.

1. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments.
2. In the methods list you will see Trondealer. Click Manage.
3. Tick Enable Trondealer.
4. Fill in:

5. Hit Save changes.
6. A Run connection test button appears. Click it.

Internally that button does:

1. GET /api/v2/clients/me with your x-api-key
   -> verifies the key exists and is active
2. Generates a random 64-char hex webhook secret
   (only if tdp_webhook_secret doesn't exist yet)
3. PATCH /api/v2/clients/me with:
   - webhook_url: https://yourdomain.com/wp-json/tdp/v1/webhook
   - webhook_secret: the generated one
4. POST /api/v2/clients/me/webhook-test
   -> TronDealer fires a test POST to your webhook
5. Verifies you responded with 2xx

If everything works you will see a green notice like:

Connected as My Store. Webhook URL https://yourdomain.com/wp-json/tdp/v1/webhook registered and verified.

If you see a "test ping failed" warning, check: valid HTTPS certificate (not self-signed), permalinks set to "Post name", and that no security plugin (Wordfence) is blocking POST requests with non-standard user agents.

On the same plugin settings page you will see Enabled networks: a multi-select of every available network:asset combo.

Recommended starter set: enable tron:USDT, bsc:USDT, pol:USDT and pol:USDC. That covers 80% of Hispanic / global cases with minimal fees. Leave Ethereum mainnet for tickets above $100 USD because of gas.

Also tune:

• Tolerance: 1% is safe. Some exchanges withdraw slightly less than requested due to internal fees; with 1% tolerance you avoid flagging legitimate orders as "underpaid".
• Whitelabel: enable it if you want 100% own branding. The customer will only see "Pay with USDT/USDC" with no mention of TronDealer.

Hit Save changes.

Before promoting the checkout, always do a real low-amount purchase to validate the full flow.

1. Create a cheap product: go to Products > Add new, set the price to $1.00 USD and publish it.

2. Open the site in an incognito window (so you don't use your admin session).

3. Add the product to the cart and go to checkout.

4. In the payment section you will see the Trondealer method with a network+asset picker.

5. Pick TRON: USDT (the fastest and cheapest option for testing).

6. Complete the checkout. You will land on the thank-you page with:

   • The deposit address generated exclusively for that order (label wc_<order_id>).
   • A scannable QR code.
   • The exact amount in USDT to send.
   • A live counter that polls the order status.

7. From your wallet (TronLink, Trust Wallet, Binance App) send exactly $1.00 USDT-TRC20 to that address.

8. Within 60–90 seconds you should see:

   • The order moves to on-hold (transaction.incoming received).
   • After 19 confirmations (~1 minute on TRON) it moves to processing or completed (transaction.confirmed).
   • An internal note with the tx_hash is added to the order for audit.

If all of that happened: you are live.

Before announcing the new payment method to your customers:

• Automated backups: configure UpdraftPlus to back up the database daily and files weekly. If your hosting goes down, you recover the store in hours, not days.
• Uptime monitoring: use UptimeRobot (free) to alert you if the site goes down. A site that's down = failed webhooks = orders that don't get confirmed.
• Reliable transactional email: configure WP Mail SMTP with SendGrid or Brevo so "order paid" emails reach the customer without going to spam.
• Cross-reconciliation: every week log into the TronDealer dashboard and compare the transactions list with your WooCommerce orders. The 5-minute WP-Cron reduces failures to near zero, but manual reconciliation is good accounting hygiene.
• Payout alerts: enable email notifications for failed sweeps in the dashboard. If a sweep fails (insufficient gas on a network, RPC outage), funds will sit until the next retry.