Paypal v. merchant account

Hi:

I'm setting up a short-duration cart for the purpose of allowing people to register for a conference and pay registration fees. One troubling aspect of it is that the user has kind of a long slog - he has to enter the registrant's registration information (not as part of the Zen process - before he ever gets there), then create a Zen account (assuming he doesn't go back and add another registrant), and THEN go to Paypal to enter his CC info. I'm currently using Paypal Website Payments Standard.

Is there any chance a merchant account would cut out a step or streamline this process at all? I did notice one good thing - a lot of the info entered during the account creation process is autofilled on the Paypal payment page.

Thanks,

Tracey

Hi Tracey,
a gateway merchant account like auth net or linkpoint will bypass a the steps required at paypal and will instead seamlessly go straight to checkout success