I've recently been considering using a merchant account and payment gateway rather than paypal (which is what i've been using for the past yr) and am a bit confused by all the options that I'm faced with. First of all - is there a difference between a third party processor and a payment gateway? Are paypal and Authorize.net both third party payment processors? Secondly - I understand that i'd need to open an online merchant account. Is it possible to have a company do my payment processing and NOT have a bank account with them? I noticed that some companies offering payment processing do have merchant account links on their webpages and some do not. For instance, Authorize.net doesn't have a merchant account link but first atlantic commerce does. Does this mean that first atlantic commerce offers merchant accounts in addition to payment processing and authorize.net doesn't?? Or will first atlantic help me open a merchant account at some bank? As you can probably tell I'm quite confused at the moment and am confusing myself more with all the reading and research/reading i'm doing. Any help clarifying my spinning head will be much appreciated!!
1. From software point of view, it is the same. From financial point of view, it is little different. TO process credit cards directly, you need merchant account (it comes from bank, no matter who is final reseller) + payment gateway (it is mostly an online service). 2. I recommend you to have a look: http://www.charge.com/banners/click.php?alexc641