Looking for a good online payment processing service
 

I'm going to be selling a service online and I need a third party payment processor to help me with the money part. The development is no problem, but I would like the payment processor to be able to interface with a database (SQL or Oracle preferred). I've never used an online payment processor so I don't know if this is standard or not. Can anyone recommend any payment processing service that may fit my needs as close a possible? Sorry if I'm being too vague but I'm not even sure about the information I need to provide for one to narrow down a decision. Any information would be appreciated.

Re: Looking for a good online payment processing service
 

I use PayPal's web payments pro. There is a $20 monthly fee, but based on startup costs and fees it's fairly competitive (and works pretty good, too).

Regardless of the solution you choose you're going to have to build an application to work with the authorization software of your payment provider, so you will likely need to manage a payments database yourself.

Re: Looking for a good online payment processing service
 

None of them will interface with your database.

How they work is they have an API and you send XML data to them, they process the data, and send you XML data back that includes an approval code, error codes, transaction IDs, etc. Some of them might not offer XML but rather they use a form POST or GET and return data in the same way. You then take that information and determine whether to show a "thank you" page or an error page displaying what was wrong with the transaction.



So they won't interface with your database but you can build the information doing SQL calls to your database and then submitting it to them in their required format.

Re: Looking for a good online payment processing service
 

I recommend google checkout. It's completely free (setup and purchases) until 2008. That is a savings of about 2% on average. THeir rates are cheaper than most merchant accounts after that.

Obviously it won't do the database stuff you want, cause no one will.

Re: Looking for a good online payment processing service
 

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How they work is they have an API and you send XML data to them, they process the data, and send you XML data back that includes an approval code, error codes, transaction IDs, etc.

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This is great news. Thanks for everyone's help.