questions abt. cgi bin with shopping carts and merchant account

[Nancjo]

Need some help. We decided to go with a merchant account the company we are looking deeply at is E-Commerce Exchange www.ecx.com and a new shopping cart qccart.com.

Does anyone use either of these? If so, have you had any problems with them?
The representative I have spoken with said that I can use any shopping cart that is for authorize.net or quick commerce..any free ones out there?

When a shopping cart speaks of .cgi bin, does this mean I need to do something with my site from my server is it still as easy as using paypal shopping cart and just having to know html codes?

Any help and all help in this will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nancy

[Rich]

Does anyone use either of these? If so, have you had any problems with them?

E-commerce Exchange is a well respected provider for several merchant banks.

I'm not familiar with qccart, but it might be a good first choice since both quick commerce and qccart are provided by E-commerce Exchange. This should make things very compatible.

And, since the qccart is a hosted shopping cart (meaning the scripts installed on qccart servers, not your web server), few technical skills will be needed to get things setup. This will allow you to focus your time on learing the shopping cart and setting up your catalog.

When a shopping cart speaks of .cgi bin, does this mean I need to do something with my site from my server is it still as easy as using paypal shopping cart and just having to know html codes?

When you hear the term cgi-bin it usually is refering to a directory on your web server where scripts can be installed and run.

The Paypal shopping cart is another hosted cart and would not require (in most installations) that you have scripts installed on your server in a "cgi-bin." However, you wouldn't use the Paypal shopping cart to process payments through your merchant account. Paypal shopping carts only process payments through the paypal system.

[Nancjo]

Thank you, Rich, I was thinking I would go with both since they are both from the same company.

When shopping online there are many times you see companies that say Visa/MC and Paypal accepted.

How do they accept paypal when they have a merchant account? Is request for money or send money used or is there another trick to it?

I really don't want to give up paypal since many people use it and actually have funds in that account to use, but I NEED the merchant account. I have had many potential customers who have called and wanted to place orders and I have to tell them at this time we only accept payments through paypal. So in my case I would like to have both.

Any suggestions?

Nancy

[Rich]

How do they accept paypal when they have a merchant account?

To do this you will need a checkout process that supports both. If you use a shopping cart, you will need to make sure that the shopping cart supports both methods.