Important Points

American, Canadian, English, and Australian residents can get a no upfront fee credit card 'merchant' account from Paypal.

SecureCottage interfaces with Paypal if you say so in your profile

You can take credit card orders within an afternoon using SecureCottage customized pages and a Paypal credit card account for no upfront fees

The Paypal Option

SecureCottage normally assumes that the merchant can service their own credit card orders and it normally sends this credit card information, encrypted, to the merchant in the form of an email.

For the large number of people who cannot process their own credit cards, there is the Paypal option.

With the Paypal option, the ordering client is directed to the Paypal secure credit card payment gateway instead of the SecureCottage credit card entry page. From there, Paypal processes your client's credit card in real time and transfers the money to an account they keep for you.

Anyone can become a Paypal Ecommerce merchant, but only residents of the USA, Australia, Canada, or Great Britain can take credit card payments. Residents of New Zealand, for instance, could be Paypal merchants, but their clients would be required to become members of Paypal before a payment could be made.

As such, the Paypal option is useful only for residents of the above mentioned countries. It is the cheapest way to take credit card payments in real time on the Internet.

Paypal merchant accounts are free to set up and have no monthly fee. A processing fee of perhaps 80c to 1.00$ as well as 2 to 3 percent of your charge applies to each transaction. It is a great way for cottage ecommerce people to go when initially setting up their Ecommerce activities.

You must set up your merchant account at Paypal yourself (see Paypal Sign Up) before you can use the Paypal option at SecureCottage.

Your encrypted order will still be emailed to you by SecureCottage, but all credit card details will be handled by Paypal. They will email you when a credit card payment is made.

If you are using your customizeable web pages made by SecureCottage, you can select the Paypal option by going into your profile (see top menu) and customizing the Invoice page. In the Invoice customization web page you can select the "Business Type". Select Paypal option for this feature.

Using SecureCottage and Paypal is a powerful way to securely transit your Ecommerce details and to take credit cards in real time. This combination avoids almost all traditional dealings with Ecommerce companies needed before you can sell products on the Internet.

If you are interfacing your own web pages to the SecureCottage Ecommerce System then consult here to find out how.