: Is there a way to take credit cards on my website without needing a merchant account/payment gateway? I've been looking for a service like this but can't find one -- it boggles my mind that

@Hamaas447

Paypal, Google Checkout and yahoo cart are some of the options but they charge too much compared to a merchant account.

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@Kaufman445

Why are you saying you don't want a merchant account? What you are effectively describing in your requirements is exactly what a merchant account achieves.

However, I would really caution you if you think capturing credit card details on your site is an easy thing to do. It isn't. There are basically two ways of doing this - via CPI (where you hand off to the Merchant's server for payment capture and they then re-direct customers back after completion) and MPI (where you handle all the capture of details on your server and just use the merchant for authorisation). MPI, which sounds like what you want, can be fraught with legal risks and liabilities should anything go wrong on your side of things. I'd read up on the laws concerning this where you will be operating.

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@Jessie594

Paypal Business version. You can
accept credit card payments on your
web site without your customers
having to create paypal accounts. No programming required!
Internet Payment Service Providers such as CCBill,
Epoch, and Verotel. They accept credit
cards and send you a check every
week. No bank or merchant account needed, and usually no programming required.

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@Gloria169

Have you looked at PayPal Website Payments Pro? It allows you to programmatically interface with PayPal's gateway, meaning your customers can stay on your site and you don't need to add any PayPal branding. Using it requires some programming know-how, as you have to send an XML request to PayPal's gateway and parse the response, but that's going to be true with any credit card processing approach where the user stays on your site.

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@Sarah324

The reason you can't find what you're looking for is because you already found it but you just don't know it. What you're looking for is a merchant account with a payment gateway. With one:


Your users fills out a form on your website
You submit data to the service (cc #, payment amount)
You receive funds for the amounts that were charged less a fee


Sound familiar?

Before anyone tries to get technical, services like Paypal and others share their merchant account with you and the payment gateway is built in. All Paypal, and others who operate like them, are doing is wrapping the whole thing up in neat little packages with the stated goal of simplifying the process.

Now if your goal is to get something different then what Paypal is offering then you need to clarify your question and explain in more detail what it is exactly that you are looking for. There are lots of options out the, some better suited to certain situations then others.

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@Welton855

Take a look at www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

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@Chiappetta492

Processing credit card numbers on your website itself isn't a trivial task and it shouldn't be able to be done by just copying and pasting some code. Many payment gateways offer the option to do something like what you describe, but it requires custom programming and an array of security measures. Your website will need to be PCI compliant at a minimum. It's not an easy task to get right, nor should it be, because not everyone should be attempting it without professional support. There's simply to much at stake.

Incidentally, users don't need to create a PayPal account in order to be able to use PayPal. PayPal accepts credit card payments without the requirement of having an account. It's only when you want to accept payments or pay with PayPal that you need a PayPal account.

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