Accept credit card payements

Question

I have a general question about accepting credit card payements.

Here is my situation:

I have a website which gives the posibility to our clients to publish some adds on it. The add is first received and checked internaly by an add editor. Then, we are asking the client for the payement and when the payement is received, the add is published.

My goal is to give the possibility to our clients to pay with their credit card. For example, send them the invoice by email with the link (or button) to a webpage where they could introduce their CC number et all needed information. This page can be created on our website.

I have read some articles about the onLine payement and sow that there is 2 main possibilities:

Use a third party merchant
Use my own merchant account

Which one of those two solutions are better in your opinion, are ther advantages - disadvantages ?

Is there another solution except those two?

What about the solution to use my own merchant account? Complicated to implement ?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

Unless you have a lot of resources available to comply with the PCI DSS standards ( https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/ ), use a third party. Much less hassle.