Credit Card Processing Confusion

[sports guy]

I have a few customers who would like to manually process credit cards. I am aware of this tutorial: https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=67 and this post: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...ine+processing which obviously I can read the strong tone in the advice.

Which is where I am really confused. What about people who do not buy the scan terminal (in real life processing). If I recall buying a swipe machine is an additional expense (although it does save on the merchant fees) Isn't it possible that some smaller companies many not have the swipe machine? In which case they would manually enter the numbers?

Second and most importantly for me is this: Where are all the large bank add-ons for payment processing. I don't see merchant account add ons for: US Bank, 5/3 Bank, Bank of America, and Huntington which are the larger banks in my area. Wouldn't these banks have their own payment gateways? If so I don't see modules for them.

I guess what I am confused about is I don't see the banks in my area in the add-on areas. But I know it's not a good idea to collect credit card numbers directly on the site. So what is everyone else doing who wants to process their own credit cards? I am either missing something really big here (my guess), or other people have alternative solutions to accepting credit cards over the internet.

These customers have Paypal but not all people want to buy with Paypal. These clients are willing to get a dedicated IP address and a Security certificate in order to accept credit cards. And why do some websites accept credit cards directly from their site? Am I forced to sign up with another online merchant account just to accept the numbers here? I am confused.