Questions about payment.

New Zen cart user here. Btw i love that the people powering zen cart are offering this as a free service really brings the e commerce world to everybody, keep up the good work.

my question is regarding the way money is taken from one account and then placed in another.

I.E.. Customer buys "X" item and goes to checkout.
when he checks out he uses his credit card.

from what I've been reading on the wikki is that i would have to have a payment
module installed and the money would be directed from his account, to the gateway, and then into the account of the site owner. (please correct me on this)

my question is basically regarding what i must do for each step of the process. here's what i came up with.

1. Install Zen cart
2. purchase a gateway
3. install a payment module that uses that gateway
4. direct a gateway to my account.

if anyone could offer a clarification on the process it would be very helpful. I'd like to know more about how this works before i set up my first online site.

thanks :D

It depends on what gateway you want to use.

If you have your own credit card processor and can enter credit card numbers manually, you can use the credit card module available in Zen Cart. Part of the customer's cc number will be emailed to you. You have to retrieve the rest from the database (this is done for security).

Payment gateways vary depending on the supplier. Most take a percentage of the sale or charge a flat fee. There are a couple included with Zen Cart (authorize.net and PayPal). There are others available in the downloads section.

The only one I'm familiar with is PayPal which takes a percentage of each transaction as a fee. There's no money required up front. You just have to have an account with them and set up the information in the Zen Cart admin and on the PayPal side.

ah, i see. So basically Zen cart will emulate a transaction based on the items purchased.

Zen Cart should be passing all the information the gateway requires to complete the transaction. Depending on the gateway, the buyer may have to enter a credit card number or log into an account, but other than that, there should be sufficient communication between ZC and the gateway to complete the transaction.