TOPIC: Requirements

Hi, This is my first venture into providing payment on my website and in order to do that I have several questions to ask to prepare before I take on this task. 1) Do I need a merchant account at Authorize.net before I can accept payments online? 2) How about Paypal? Do I need to to get a merchant account with them as well? 3) How do I collect payments made to these entities? Apologies for my lack of knowledge about this thing. I'm hoping to get off the ground with your assistance. Thanks. sancho

Hello sancho! No worries on the questions. You'll never know if you don't ask 1) Authorize.net is not required for all online payments. However, it is the main payment gateway used in our components and is very popular in other payment solutions as well. Authorize.net is NOT a merchant account, but it is the online payment gateway to add to your merchant account. Authorize.net also has optional add-ons to support recurring payments as well as ECheck. 2) PayPal is an online payment solution that you can use WITHOUT a merchant account. It has no monthly fees, just transaction fees. It is not as easy of a transaction for your users as a direct payment is using Authorize.net, but it is the type of system you have to use if you do not have a merchant account. Our components support BOTH Authorize.net and PayPal. You can configure the components to use one or the other OR both. 3) Payments made through a merchant account would be "settled" at the end of the business day and deposited directly into your checking account usually within a few days. Payments made through PayPal are deposited into your PayPal account. You can then request a withdrawal from PayPal. The best option is having them direct deposit the funds into your checking account. Any other questions... just let us know. Thanks and good luck!

Hi. Need some clarification.
Suppose I don\'t have any account with authorize.net and have only paypal account.
In that case am I allowed to use DTDONATE just by using my paypal account info?

By looking at the component it looks like I need to have an authorize.net account which I don’t want.

Thanks

No, you don\'t need authorize.net at all.