You have a number of options for handling transactions for Ecommerce solutions. The most basic approach is to handle all of your transactions offline. For example, you could publish your address and have your customers send their orders along with a check or money order directly to you. You could also collect your customers’ credit card information via email or phone and then process the credit card transactions offline using your retail merchant account.

These are probably not the best approaches, though, because one of the main reasons customers shop at an online store and with Ecommerce solutions is for the speed and convenience it provides.

To increase the chances that customers will want to shop on your Ecommerce site, it should be able to accept and process credit card transactions online and in “real-time.” You can handle your own online transactions or outsource them to a third-party credit card processor.

If you want to handle online credit card transactions yourself, you will need an internet-ready merchant account, a payment gateway service and an SSL certificate. Or, call J.M. Field Marketing, an established provider of merchant accounts and payment gateway services.