I see everyone talking about merchant accounts and I think I understand what they are -- A way to have a cart and a checkout on your site, right?

If so... you talk about providing them to your clients... Well, I looked at MivaMerchant and a liscence was like 300 bucks... Do _I_ pay for a liscence for my customers? Because that's insane. Or do I tell my customers how much it will cost? Or does 1 liscence work for every customer I get?

merchant account is different than a cart. a merchant account is what enables you to process credit cards and for them to be facilitated to your bank account. They really have nothing to do with shopping cart software. They can be input into them,b ut they don't actually take the orders.

Okay, so like.... Do I have to buy a license for every client that wants it?

Or do I just buy one license for all my customers and manually put in the software for them?


BTW - I will be using ensim control panel...

You just buy the software and can load it as many times as the software license allows -

What are you looking for exactaly? A merchant account, as in a bank account that your business uses to collect funds from your customers? Or are you looking for something like miva merchant, which is a shopping cart type software that is an interface to display goods to your customers?

I'm not sure.. I keep seeing stuff about e-commerce websites and providing merchant accounts to your customers..

What AM I looking for?

I dont know, i'm confused.

You are best to ask the host you are considering, as some may also confuse the terminology. Some hosts offer merchant software, such as various shopping carts and such. And others may also offer some sort of basic merchant account for businesses to get started with collecting fees. It is just hard to say for sure without asking them or reading the fine print because there are so many misused terms in this industry you could easily be mislead.

I'm talking about what should _I_ offer as a good host.

What features that don't come standard with ensim should I pay licensing for to make my customers happy?

as a host i dont think you should offer your customers merchant facilities, offer then a secure server and point them to a company which does merchant accounts such as 2checkout.

A merchant account comes with specific id number a bank and processor uses to reconize which business is the one trying to process a card or a credit card number. Once card or number is processed it is then deposited into banks account which in return they then deposit into your account within 24 to 72 hours depending on what processor or bank you chose. A merchant account is simply a number that is recognized by the processor and banks containing all of your information including your checking account info so they can automatically deposit the funds into your account. Shopping cart is simply a way to allow customer to view products and services you are offering and a way to collect information from your customer if they decide to buy, once they click on submit button it takes them to whatever gateway you chose to process cards securely online for instance authorize.net which then they transfer that information to the actual processor who assigned you a merchant account then they transfer funds over to bank. I am in a hurry but I hope this helps a little. An example of one way of many diferrent ways to process cards online:

You have a page displaying service or product.
Once they fill out billing info and click submit it takes them to a payment gateway ie. authorize.net which then they relay info to your regular processor which then they send info to bank.

So what do I need?

A way to display products & services (shopping cart...form..)

payment gateway i.e (authorize.net) who can relay info securely to processor who has all your info.

A merchant account from a processor or bank to process your credit card transactions.

A business checking account so funds that were charged to customers can be deposited in your account.