newbie question about capabilities of Paypal Web Payments Standard

If I want to keep the customer's encrypted credit card information on file in my Zen Cart database, is that something that can be done with Paypal Website Payments Standard, or do I have to go with Website Payments Pro?

Follow-up question: If only Pro has that functionality, does anyone know of a merchant account provider that offers the same thing for less? Paypal Website Payments Pro is $30.00 a month, and that's too much for the small volume of business I'm doing now.

Not sure you can keep that info on file - better check that out!

Tina

I just mean that Zen Cart will hold onto it so the customer doesn't have to enter it each time.

For people who have PayPal accounts, they won't have to enter their information each time. Otherwise, they'll be entering it on PayPal's site to make the payment. You don't want to store information like that. Encrypted or not, it's a security risk and you will be responsible if it's stolen.

I'm pretty confused about how this stuff works. I'd like to offer my customers something like what you get at newegg.com or amazon.com, where you don't have to enter your credit card number every time. But in order to do this, I would have to store the number in the database along with the rest of their account details, and if I understand correctly, Zen Cart does not facilitate that, regardless of the merchant account provider I use?

If you want to off that sort of service, you need to be PCI compliant. I would suggest you Google for it.

Kim:

If you want to off that sort of service, you need to be PCI compliant. I would suggest you Google for it.There may be a way to offer such a service without the need to be PCI-compliant. In my research tonight I came across the very interesting cdgcommerce.com/free-payment-gateway.php Quantum Gateway service, which apparently stores the customer's credit card info for you on their own PCI-compliant servers, while all you store is a "Recipe ID" affiliated with the card. When it is time to charge the card, your cart sends the RID and amount to Quantum Gateway. (At least, this is how it appears to work.) It looks like there is an official Zen Cart mod and an unofficial one out already. Elsewhere on the forum someone says the unofficial one is completely transparent. I think I'm going to look into them both.