There are a variety of organisations who will  provide online payment processing facilities.

Pay Pal is by far the most popular online payment provider allowing almost anyone to set up an online payment mechanism. Pay Pal is far from perfect from an interface point of view but so far we haven’t found a provider that is.

Worldpay are well known and well established but are relatively expensive. The smaller players such as Netbanx are cheaper but may not offer the online payment integration options that you require.

If you are looking to weigh up the pros and cons of which online payment provider to go for you need to consider:

• What are the set up costs for online processing 
  
  
• What are the transaction fees (and minimum monthly costs)
  
  
• Who’s credit and debit cards do they support
  
  
• Do they support online Direct Debit or continuos authority
  
  
• What are their settlement procedures like
  
  
• Are they easy to deal with (sadly in our experience the answer is normally..... no) 

Online Shopping Carts let you manage your stock and let customers pick and choose from your virtual shelves.

Some e-commerce Shopping Carts are pretty simple and provide only a limited number of SKUs (ie product slots). This can be a problem if you intend to sell a great many items using your online Shopping Cart.

While some online shopping cart systems come with integration already in place for their preferred Payment Partners others may only support Pay Pal or one payments provider. 

In some cases the online shopping cart software is provided to allow the system to be changed and extended by your ecommerce website partner. Occasionally shopping cart software is provided free while other online e-commerce shopping carts require a hefty fee.

The best shopping cart solutions provide good back office facilities to let you manage and stock your online shop easily so it's best to closely examine whether or not the back office is good enough for your needs.