ecommerce conundrum

[code_e]

Okay, this is my first question on this site so please be gentle... ;)

I am planning to develop an e-commerce website using Java, JSP and some AJAX. I use my own hardware and plan to develop my site from scratch. My problem isn't necessarily with the aforementioned technologies, rather, it is with credit card payment/acceptance and whatnot. I want to accept credit (and paypal) payments but I don't want the responsibility of insuring that my hardware and software are secure. My intuition (and reading) tells me that I can pull a user through my non-secured web site until their personal information needs to be accepted. I am assuming when this is neccessary I will push the user off to a payment service and I will later receive payment from this payment service...which is just a broker or ************* for the credit card companies (right)?

So....How do I do this? Let me make my question simple...On my web site I know that a user has dropped $100.00 of product into their shopping cart basket. That's all I want to know. I then want to contact a secured payment server somewhere in internet-land to take payment. Is this how it works? If so any suggestions on what companines to "conspire" with would be helpful.

Thanks in advance....

code_e the coder.

P.S. The reason I put this on a Java topic is because what I have read is all related to PHP. I don't develop my sites with PHP as I prefer Java.

[Waylander]

The way I understand it is pretty much the same, the payment gateways are just a money broker, however the person pays thier account with the gateway is untirely up to them.

Yes, Most stores only really need secure elements when loging in and with account creation and then at the checkout.

Im not sure about credit cards though, if you are going to accept credit card payment on the site you will probably be the one who has to put them through, I dont know of any specific credit card brokers mainly becuase ive usually dealt with those who have credit card systems in thier premisis and just get the details in an email then put the order through the existing system.

I dont know of any credit card system brokers (or whatever one would be called) so you may want to look into it further.

Waylander.

[code_e]

Thanks for your reply Waylander. I'll do a little more digging and hopefully I be able to gather enough info at some point to begin.

[nightster]

Try:
www.paypal.co.uk
www.nochex.co.uk

[code_e]

nightser:

Thanks a million! I went to paypal and have been reading up on what they offer. This is good stuff.

Thanks again.