Lay it all out for me.

[NewMonarch]

I'm a programmer. I know the ins and outs of PHP. I've got a client that is a concert promoter. He wants to sell tickets through his site like Ticket Master. Here's his current site (before I've done anything to it yet) Click for Mancuso Productions (http://www.mancusoproductions.com).

Here's my issue: I don't hardly know the first thing about processing online payments (credit card or otherwise). I've made stores before and I will be programming the store itself. I just don't know what else I need to learn about. Authorize.net? Merchant accoun? Other than an SSL cert, what else am I going to need?

Thanks!

!jon
www.deepthoughtdesign.com (http://www.deepthoughtdesign.com)

[Rincewind]

You need an account with a payment processor. This could be authorize.net, costco, or just paypal and ibill, 2checkout etc etc etc. There are lots of them to coose form. Which is best for you will depend on the rates they charge and the amount of traffic that you need to process. For small numbers, paypal will be fine (esp since it's free), for large amazon size things, authorize.net is more your thing. Paypal has a new Pro payment system that is rather nice and well worth looking at.

You won't always need an SSL. Depending on the processor you choose. Most will do the actual transaction on their own site, so using their SSL. Only paypal pro and the high end systems will use a SSL on your own server.

The processor you opt for will provide instuctions for how to implement their API into your scripts so you can pass the customer over to the payment system and recieve confirmation back to your database.