This can be a tricky situation. Often, you do not want to go the
"cheapest" route. Remember, you are dealing with cash here and you want a
provider/service that is reputable, stable, honest, and provides good
service/support.
I did a lot of research in this area about two years ago when I was
setting up the credit card processing systems for Edgeos. I found
that paying a couple extra pennies per transaction can be well worth it.
You will need a few items to do credit card processing seamlessly in
real-time from your web site. These things are:
* A bank account
You know what this is - the place where your money is held.
* A merchant account
This is like a pseudo-bank account. This is the account where
the credit card companies put the cash for your transactions, then
the merchant account provider electronically transferrs the money
to your bank account in daily and/or weekly batches.
* A merchant gateway provider
This is the middle man between your web server and the merchant
account. Basically, your web server (to do real-time transactions)
talks HTTP and SSL. However, the merchant account provider typically
does not. They talk some protocol (???) that is what those
swipe-your-card terminals talk. Thus, the gateway acts as the
middle man to allow your web server (HTTP/SSL) to talk to the
merchant account to authorize/process/charge transactions.
* Code on your web server to talk to/from the merchant gateway
This is just what is sounds like... the code (PHP? CGI? Perl? Python?
Whatever...) that runs on your web server to talk with the merchant
gateway. Many reputable gateway providers will give you free chunks
of code you can use, and/or they will give you documentation about how
to write your own interface. Fear not, once you read the
documentation, you will see that this is actually pretty simple.
Some services may bundle some of these things together. Others may not.
Having all of these components will allow your business to directly
process all your own credit card transactions. Getting it set up can take
some time, but once it is done, you can just about unlimited flexibility
and the lowest rates.
For a new or small business, typically the hardest part is getting the
merchant account. The best way I have found to accomplish this is through
Costco. If your business is a Costco Executive Member (~$100/year) you get
*tons* of benefits through the Costco network. In addition to being able
to shop in all the stores, they have a wealth of business services that
are only available to their Executive Members. Once of these services is
merchant accounts - Costco partners with Nova Merchant Systems. Nova is
the world's second largest merchant account company. Stable, reputable,
fast, and efficient. Best of all, as a Costco member, you even get a
"special" help desk / customer support number. In my experience, they have
been very fast and helpful.
Your bank account can be just about anything/anywhere. It may have to be a
business checking account, but other than that, just about any bank
account will work. Basically, the bank account is just receiving
electronic deposits from the merchant account.
As for the merchant account gateway provider, I use a company called
IONGate. They have been very good, no noticable downtime, very simple
implementation/integration, quality service, plenty of
accounting/tracking/reporting/manual-processing tools, etc... They are
also the gateway provider that Costco recommended. I have been happy with
their service.
The last part is just the piece of code that runs on your web server to
talk to the merchant gateway. We used the documentation from IONGate and
coded our own custom client to speak with their systems. Nonetheless, they
do also offer pre-built modules in PHP, C, Perl, and Python. The code is
free for their customers and does include source.
I hope this helps. Basically, the place to start is to go to Costco and
signup as an Executive Member. Also at the customer service desk at any
Cosco, they will have brochures about their merchant processing services
for Executive Members.
~Jay
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Austin Godber wrote:
> No tips? There are so many options. Also, let this server as a ping to
> the list since I haven't seen anything for a while.
>
> Austin
>
> Austin Godber wrote:
> > Hello Everyone,
> > Finally time to help my parents with a website and I am looking into
> > credit card processing from a website. Anyone have experience with
> > this? Is there a recommended way to accomplish it using PHP on a Linux
> > machine? Oh perl is an option too.
> >
> > I have checked out authorize.net and some of their resellers. I
> > have also seen some products that don't use Authorize.net's gateway
> > service.
> >
> > It appears that you can handle the transaction yourself using some
> > special libraries or use a third party site for payment and maybe
> > shopping cart as well. Am I understanding this correctly?
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--
..
.. Jay Jacobson
.. Edgeos, Inc. - 480.961.5996 -
http://www.edgeos.com
..
.. Managed Vulnerability Assessment
.. Services for Information Security Professionals
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