Online payments. Your two cents...

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speedy33417
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Online payments. Your two cents...

Post by speedy33417 »

I'd like to hear from people who have developed ecommerce websites on ways to do it.

I'm considering adding online payments to one of my websites, which brings up a lot of additional questions.

Dependable and affordable merchant account services.
Should I use PayPal instead? Would that allow me not to have a merchant account?
Any other alternate solutions?
Open-source services such as ZenCart.

Now this would be my first attempt at this, so any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
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jayshields
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Post by jayshields »

If it's a small business, just stick with PayPal. They have also developed their own shopping cart which you can implement into your own website to save you installing an external one or making your own.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

There are also a lot of PHP based shopping cart apps that plug in to Paypal very well. And yes, Paypal will keep you from having to get a merchant account (it kinda acts like your merchant account).

They have several variations to choose from, like the 'Get sent to Paypal to pay then get sent back' all the way to the 'Pay for everything though Paypal right on your site'. I would suggest getting a membership to their sandbox so you can play around a little, and certainly check our their API documentation because there is a lot of things you can do if you chose to code your own interface.
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speedy33417
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Post by speedy33417 »

Thanks guys!

I was a little uneasy about PayPal first. I thought my customers would need a PayPal account and they would have to leave my website and so on.
As it turns out it's not that bad :)
My customers don't have to have a PayPal account and if I can cough up $20 a month I can even implement the checkout process into my website. Or with a free service the checkout is done on their website, but they'll match the header of my site which is fine with me.

Anyway, I signed up with PayPal (awaiting confirmation of the account) and I'll give it a go...

I'll might have some questions once I get there...
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