I know in paypal you can view your transaction history as well.

Personally, I would only ship items that my Gateway has recorded and not rely on any shopping cart emailing me. The Gateway service is going to conduct a chargeback, not the shopping cart.

That is incorrect. We send all that information to the merchant so that they know what to charge the customer. You can then view this order information inside of the merchant.

Yep, if it weren't for the Cart software sending it to the Payment provider, how else would that information get to them? Therefore, it collects it, tallies it, and sends it off to the Payment provider that you chose. From there it's handled by the payment provider. Either way, SCC is what collects the original information. Keep in mind, this is all done without databases, actually pretty impressive if you ask me, without dealing with databases as of yet, and still able to get all this information into the right hands through the right channels

I must admit that the whole merchant services process has always been confusing to me. I didn't realize Authorize.net was similar to PayPal or Google Checkout. I've always thought they were a "payment gateway," a middle-man in the overall process of accepting credit cards.

Having looked again at Authorize.net's web site, I'm still confused. What type of account does one create with them that would be similar to PayPal? When you look at their Credit Card Processing Diagram, they include their services as part of the overall process of accepting credit cards. In addition to their payment gateway service, there is the Merchant Bank's Processor, the Credit Card Network, and the Customer's Credit Card Issuing Bank.

If I'm reading the diagram correctly, it appears funds from individual transactions are automatically deposited to my bank account. PayPal will hold my funds until I tell them to do a transfer to my bank account. Google Checkout will automatically deposit funds to my bank account from multiple transactions.

Their What We Do page adds to my confusion with regard to the fee structure. They state "Typical service fees—setup, monthly, and per- transaction—are determined by our resellers. See our pricing page for more information." So does this mean I must set up an account with a reseller in addition to Authorize.net?

I must be missing something, somewhere.

Authorize.net is a company that will allow you to accept credit cards for payments similar to PayPal. They also offer a wide range of credit cards you can accept. The big difference between the two is you can setup a PayPal account on the fly and start selling right away. Authorize.net has an entire application process and is only available in the USA. Transactions are done in real time and funds will appear with the batch runs around midnight. There is no hold time. Fees are also a bit different depending on who you sign-up with too.

So I would, then, need to purchase merchant services through a third party as well as setting up an account with Authorize.net. It seems overly complicated to me. I guess I've always been confused about the need for a payment gateway. If PayPal or Google Checkout can be both the payment gateway AND processor all-in-one, why isn't this the norm?

There are a variety of reasons. Some may not be so apparent with our software, but Authorize.net has some very nice integration tools. For example, all sales on coffeecup.com are powered by Authorize.net. If you are also a high volume seller, you can negotiate a better rate.

Hi James. Cart Creator is a 'straight to payment processor' cart. That means a buyer has the security of only dealing with a reputable payment provider, rather than passing on personal details to an unknown merchant.

Because for the small fries PayPal and Google rates make better sense. For those with tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars transacted in a month, using these services would cost quite a bit more in fees. And there is no immediate funds posted into their account to boot.