Charging credit cards on websites - How does it work?

[Mac8myPC]

I have a client who wants to have users who have a membership to his site, and be able to manage their own accounts, credit card payments.. yada yada..

I want to know how do the credit cards work? are they automatically billed by the website? is the credit card number emailed to the accounts department and they set up the transaction?

I've used paypal before but never anything on this scale... any suggestions? opinions?

[nocrapchurch]

Doing that type of stuff over email is a no-no. Its considered extremely unsecure. Online shops like Amazon and the million others all have systems that automatically charge the cards.

The client is going to need a "Merchant" account. That merchant account will be used to charge credit cards. All the money will need to go into a "Business" account.

The easiest place I've found to set this up is at goEmerchant.com. They take care of both the merchant and business account. They also give you the code to set up shopping carts and all that stuff.

-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/

[phuckqcom]

Also check out paypal.com

[[-S|NiStEr_MiNd-]]

I would avoid paypal. there have been too many fraud issues and users not getting paid with them.

[DeeDesigns]

i've seen a few real time credit card processing application , let me get the urls of them and i'll post them back

[gecko2]

You need a totally legit merchant account which uses a real bank.

Try http://www.web-merchant.co.uk

[Mac8myPC]

thanks for the info...

my question is'nt really about the merchant account side of it. I was just wondering how the numbers got transmitted. does the server automatically bill the credit card when the user inputs their cc number? or does an accounting department need to get ahold of the numbers and transmit them manually?

and paypal would not work for this. it's going to have to be a custom job as far as the shopping cart side of it goes. It's really not that involved of a database to construct, just user info. I was going to write script to encrypt the cc numbers in the database. as long as the server was locked down and no one had the key, there would be no way for them to grab the numbers. it's a given this would all be done behind a SSL as well.

[TheOriginalFlashDavo]

At one stage we set up a site that had a fully encrypted form page where the user entered their details/credit card, and it then stored the details on a secure server that was accessed manually by the client to process the orders himself, rather than any automatic credit card processing.

It does have to be HIGHLY secure though, or forget about it.

[gadawg]

It all depends on how you set it up. With most merchant accounts you have your online form (secure of course)which the user enters their cc # & info and it sends it (encrypted) to the banks servers which verifies it and then automatically deducts the transaction from the cc holder and credits the merchant the transaction amount at the end of the day.
For merchant accounts go to http://www.cardservice.com
For shopping cart software I would recommend Miva Merchant.
http://www.miva.com

[cyk]

I think if I remember correctly, http://www.cardservice.com will also provide you with the code for the order form/shopping cart if you want it

[Musicman]

Hi,

automatic processing is a nice feature if your business matches the scenario, and it saves you a lot of hassles.
Maybe your business is different...
I found one processing system that would allow the dealer to log in to the processor's site and make deductions within two weeks (this time limit is enforced by CC companies) after the purchase. So if the business is selling products that have to be backordered, the system could make the actual deduction at the time the goods actually leave the store. What about products that take even longer to deliver? You can either do the automatic way and collect the payment way before the goods are ready, or store CC numbers on your server and then send paper receipts to the processing company

Musicman

[antne]

http://www.ibill.com

[Biodynamic]

You need 2 things,
A merchant account with your bank, and
a gateway provider.

You then need someone who knows php/perl or something to set it up for you - not much work at all really. How it works is that the gateway provider authenticates your payments securely for you and then sends the money for the merchant account. The merchant account cost me in the range of $100 USD to set up and $12.50 USD per month, as well as a percentage of transactions(3.5%) and the gateway provider charges per transaction - $500 USD for 5000 transactions. I am in Australia so obviously prices will vary greatly.
Hope it help,
Cheers,
Dale