You can take payments online in a number of ways. The first is Paypal - this an inexpensive way to start taking payments quickly, especially if you don't have a merchant account. With PayPal, your visitors can pay you with a credit card or by sending a payment from their checking account (echeck).

PayPal provides a shopping cart and many other free services that are helpful to sites that are starting out. They charge 2.9% +£0.15 per transaction and have no start-up fees.

The downsides are that PayPal is not a very customizable solution, and it can have a “start-up” feel. However, this is changing and many mainstream sites are now accepting PayPal as more and more people have PayPal accounts.

PayPal is inexpensive both because there are no merchant account of payment gateway fees, but also because PayPal provides a very easy way to integrate their shopping cart into your site, which reduces development time.

If you want to process credit cards directly, we suggest you search google for 'online merchant accounts' Worldpay is a good example.