All I want to do is be able to accept credit cards online...
and I've read for several hours and I'm still not entirely sure what to do.

I want on my side:
-Recurring Billing
-The ability to 100% customize and integrate it in to my site
-I should be able to customize and integrate (and host on my own server) when somebody is paying, so at the end it says thank you for your _____ purchace for $__.
-I should also be able to customize and integrate a system where the user can look up how much they've paid, and what their plan is etc.
-Accept all the usual good stuff. I guess whatever verisign can accept if I buy the Payflow Pro. (accepting paypal is a plus)

On the other side I would like:
Buyer Authentication and Fraud Protection Services... cause I don't wanna end up coughing up money just because some idiot tries to use a false creditcard on my site and succeeds.


How do I do this???
And preferably how for the least amount of money...


Can I just... buy a verisign online payflow pro account, and then pay for some online shopping thingy like:
http://www.portline.com/



... And what's the difference between "E-Commerce and Web Server" and Shopping Cart integration... if E-commerce means I can do shopping cart integration for my hosted customers as well that'd be worth paying for..

1. You need a shopping cart, there are countless alternatives , both free and commercial ones

2. You need a merchant account

3. You need a payment gateway, like payflow pro, Authorize.net and countless others.

4. Your choosen shopping cart software should have a ready made module for your choosen gateway, or you should have a technical person on hand to do the integration for you.

You can always use Paypal too, but reagrding Paypal your customers will be sendt away from your webpages to do the actual payment on Paypals servers, and then when the payments are done they are then sent back to your site again.

do you know any good shopping cart places that would allow me to fully integrate the site on to my server?
what languages are these usually in?

how do i go about getting a merchant account?...

Are you located in Canada or London?

Getting the Verisign Electronic Payment gateway and not being based in the United States is a bit more dififcult than LinkPoint / Authorizenet.com

Some shopping carts:

www.x-cart.com

suncart - www.turnkeywebtools.com

some good and free ones:

www.zencart.com
www.oscommerce.com
www.creloaded.com

About merchant accounts that depends heavily about from where you are located.

Basically World Wide:

worldpay.com

Includes their own payment gateway , can be fully integrated into your site.

Europe:

Metacharge.com
forcetronix.com
chronopay.com

These tre can provide merchant account and payment gateway.

US:

Authorize.net , and their countless ressellers
Linkpoint.com and their countless ressellers
verisign.com

They can all assist you with both a merchant account and a payment gateway

Othervise there is also the option of contacting your local business bank and accuire a merchant account with them. They will then also have information on which payment gateways are compatible with their set up.

Hope this helps... :-)

I'm in Canada, what merchant accounts are best for me here
I looked around and most only accept visa and mastercard. i want to be able to accept more than just those two.

You might check out: http://www.digitallyjustified.com/merchant.php for some Canadian Options as well.

Canadian one who in addition to Visa and Mastercard also supports American Express

http://www.psigate.com/