I got given a job to build an ecommerce site, I'm quite aware of the merchant checkouts from worldpay, google, paypal etc. What are the pro's and cons of trying to setup a standalone checkout without having to go through 3rd party? Customer purchases e-product, puts on cc details and transaction goes straight into account? rather than customer using 3rd party merchant and marchant taking 1-2% commission.

Like I say I dont know anything about the whole process, time length, development time, security issues etc.

The biggest advantage to using 3rd party software is just that, you don't have to do all that code, just pay the little bit of cash, and its done.

Building a full e-commerce solution is going to require quite a bit of your time, as well as lots and lots of testing, you are dealing with money, so you don't want a single possible vulnerability in the system.

My advice, stick with a pre-existing merchant service, and build your own front end shopping cart/checkout system to link directly into a 3rd party payment system.

setting up your own e-comm site requires a few things.

SSL Cert,
Correctly configured IIS/Apache
Payment Processor (I Prefer Protx also one of the cheapest)
Merchant bank account for taking cleared online funds.
Ltd company registered and Ltd company bank account.

Also a good idea to be able to encrypt data in the database if your taking and storing payment details.

Apart from that writing a checkout and basket system is pretty fucking simple and can be done in a couple of hours no problems the hardest part is ensuring you've catered for all cases of calls to the basket and all events of add/removal.

the payment process is usually a simple case of a post to a remote script or a call to an object in asp/c# using an embedded IIS .DLL.

You could ofc pick up a 3rd party cart and payment system that just bolts onto whatever payment gateway you give it. One that springs to mind is CubeCart iirc

Thanks that helpped, I would prefer going through 3rd party but Ive gotta convince the best option to the client. They currently use ebay to sell products and dont like the idea of ebay/paypal taking a percentage of their products..

Cheers for the info.

Just FYI, almost every credit card processing is going to take a % of all sales, which is why some gas stations, who take debit or cash only, can sell gas for 5-10 cents cheaper a gallon.