Question About Implementing a Shopping Cart and Security

I wasn't quite sure if this was the right place to post this but seeing as to how the forum mentions e-commerce I figured I would give it a shot.

I am thinking about designing an online store for my Dad's repair shop as he sells a lot of parts and would like an outlet for this online. I plan on using Apache to serve the website and Tomcat to deal with the JSPs and servlets which I will be using to access a mySQL database that contains part, stock and pricing information.

My main question is, can I rely on the Apache openSSL module to encrypt the form information and reliably get it to a server?

Thanks for your help.

I haven't used openSSL; however, my gut tells me if you're handling credit card transactions over https, better to be on the safe side and spend a little coin on a commercial SSL certificate.