Does anyone out there know how to create shopping carts and how to make sure it is secure for credit cards? Is this something that I will have to go to the people that offer the service for credit and debit? I have seen that pay pal offers the ablity to create the shopping carts but is there anything else out there. Can anyone help?

I would check with your host service. Most offer an e-commerce package with shopping carts relatively inexpensively.

The host offers some help but it is through pay pal and some other sites like that. Some of those sites you have to pay to do anything with that is the only reason that I asked(to learn it/do it for free). Sorry it took so long to reply

First, creating a credit card process yourself won't be easy and won't be cheap. Most webhosts charge extra for using SSL. It would be easier to get somebody to do this part for you.

OK, if you want some tutorials for building a shopping cart etc. just type something along the lines of "shopping cart tutorial" into Google. There are tonnes out there. Also if you know what language you'll want to be using (e.g. ASP, PHP etc.) add that into the search too.

Also there are bits of software out there that can help you do this too. I'm guessing that DreamWeaver or Frontpage will probably have wizards to help you do this. Also check out this page --> http://www.actinic.co.uk/ . Actinic provide software to help you get an ecommerce site up and running quickly and easily.

Finally, as an alternative to PayPal, check out http://www.worldpay.com


Hope that helps.
Lee,

You aren't going to be able to do this for free.

You _need_ a signed SSL certificate or else no one is going to buy anything from you...
No one is going to put their credit card into a form on a self-signed website, even if you have 128-bit encryption.

Looks like these guys are offering... never bought one myself:
https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/ssl/ssl.asp
http://verisign.com
http://www.instantssl.com/
http://www.geotrust.com/
http://www.digicert.com/

Thanks folks this is harder then I thought it would be so I think that I will stick to what the host offers and what pay pal has. I never thought about all the things that go into the setup of the carts and the credit cards.

It all depends on where you are located. Normally, when you buy something - you enter your credit card information on a secure website (SSL). And if the website is using an electronic payment gateway (like LinkPoint, Authorizenet.com, Verisign, etc), they offer an API to integrate into your website. They also provide the coding as well to help with this integration.

If you are in the United States and expect to do more than $1,000 a month in volume, a merchant account is usually a more viable solution

If you have a low volume of transactions pay pal is a great way to do it. You are going to have to deal with a payment gateway one way or another and most charge fees up front before you sell anything. Pay Pal takes the fees out of the transactions but has no recurring charges. Make sure you set up a merchant account with paypal. Then start looking around in the merchant area. You can get a shopping cart, etc for free. You will not need your own SSL for this.

Gl