Payments By Credit Card?

Q: Can anyone point me to information or examples on real-life online and secure credit card processing for newbies? The I Buy Spy store didn't really go in to that. I use Paypal periodically but that a pretty cheezy way to do it. What if one wanted to setup a real online store, how would you handle payments by credit card?

A: -I've been looking into this recently myself. What I have found is that is expensive (for me anyway). Check out Verisign for one, they offer credit card processing. Or check with your bank about a merchant account, they should offer services on how to setup CC processing online. -Thought I'd pass this along, some useful info, not necessarily addressing the interaction with the verifier, but some other stuff that could come in handy (I only know about this article cuz everytime I browse this site, they show this link at the bottom) -There are 3 main ways to do it (that i know of) 1. Set up a merchant account with your bank, get an SSL certificate and go through the entire process of getting it 'validated' by your bank. This is not only time consuming and very expensive, but next to impossible unless you have a couple years trading history and full records and accounts. 2. Set up a merchant account

with your bank and use a credit card processor to handle the online stuff using their servers. You don't need an SSL certificate as the payment pages are hosted on their servers. This is faster, but you still need a merchant account, which means you still need the books and history. 3. Join a 'bureau' program. This is by far the cheapest and fastest (though they take a larger commission). You don't need a merchant account or SSL certificate. The payment page is hosted on their site, and payments go directly to their merchant account. They then pay you 4-8 weeks in arrears. If you're just starting, bureau is probably best, and then you can always upgrade later...