I'm working on creating a site that will sell promotional items to businesses. I'm going to need a shopping cart (I'm using OSCommerce) and I'll need to be able to accept credit card information, but don't need to authorize the info online (not yet anyway). My supplier handles that part along with shipping, etc.

What do I need to be able to accept payment information securely? I'm new to this part of web development and I've never used certificates or secure servers before and I do not yet have either one. I need to find some info on how they work and what I need.

Thanks for all your patience & help.

It sounds like your supplier is handling the customer actually punching in their cc info, correct? So, they order on your site, then when they click "check out" they are forwarded to the supplier's site? If this is the case, then you don't really need anything else to be able to do this.

Your supplier should be able to help you through this if they are processing the cards. I'd give them a call / email and see if they have any tutorials or if they can better explain it to you.

The problem is that the supplier has no online resources for accepting credit cards. They accept credit cards in the form of me faxing them an order form with my customer's credit card info on it. So my choices seem to be, gathering the customer's info and faxing or calling it in, or using a credit card authorization thingy myself which will cost me, and then paying the supplier for the customer's order.

They need something like authorize.net

Is that similar to 2Checkout? If I use something like 2Checkout then I don't need to worry about a secure server or certificates, correct? Hmmm.... :idea: