On the stage of getting your online store live, you will likely face the problem of accepting credit card payments from your customers. It is the most common and convenient payment method available over the Internet. To accept credit card payments at your X-Cart-based online store, you will need to subscribe to the service of a payment gateway that will process credit cards for you. But how can you choose the one that is right for you? You do not have the luxury of rectifying a wrong decision. Apart from the service cost, you stand to lose out much more - customers, orders, fraud-related losses, integration time, time to market, etc.

If your store is just starting out, you will want to keep fixed costs low. Therefore, you should choose a gateway that offers its SSL certificate free of charge, does not require installing components on your server, and does not charge excessive penalties for chargebacks.

Suppose your store is already established, with a clear projection of sales levels. In that case, you will want to choose a gateway that allows you to use your merchant account and your SSL certificate and offers all the security measures and uniformity of advanced integration methods.

X-Cart also supports payments through non-credit card means, for example, PayPal. This company acts as an intermediary between users and transfers funds from one user to another by discounting the transaction amount from the payer’s account. In some instances, this system can be helpful, although the verification procedure is quite complicated.

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