do i need ssl if using a payment gateway

hi,
do i need ssl if using a payment gateway like secpay, or paypal to complete the transaction on an ecommerce website

If I collect the data i need, shipping info etc. and then go to the secpay page for them to fill in their details (which will be encrypted on their end) will i need an ssl certificate for my site?

That depends what your site is going to be used for. Generally speaking, sites that offer some sort of service or product that can be purchased, even if linked to paypal or secpay, allow for user logins so they can have their personal carts, etc. If you are going to have a login section, it's better to have it with SSL, as customers (or potential customers) will feel more at ease knowing that the transactions or logging in is secure. A lot of people won't appreciate you not having SSL if they log in or whatnot.

However, if you are just going to have a catalog which they can pick what they want, and just go directly to paypal or secpay to pay, it's not entirely necessary.

I own 2 businesses... 1 of them an ecommerce site. I don't allow them to directly purchase from the site, but I link up with paypal for that, and I use SSL. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Hope this helps.

i see

the way i have it is that a customer can view the site, add products to a cart and go to checkout (all unsecure)

then they enter their address (unsecure), then they are sent to secpay (secure) where they enter their card details.

then the payment review at the end is hosted on their secure server.

so in this senario, what would u suggest? would ppl want to know their address is sent securely

Yes... in todays world, people want to know everything about them is secure.. even their address. There are always those looking to find out info on people so they can try to spam or sell their products and services, so they steal info on others however they can.

I mean you could get away with having their address sent unsecurely, but that's not something I would recommend.

okay, thanks very much for your help

my last question is, (i have been looking at secpay) what payment gateway do you use?

I'm not familiar with secpay. As of right now, I just integrate paypal... Haven't had any problems as of yet with paypal.

cool,

i read on the paypal site that when you send your payment details to paypal, the user then enters their details into a paypal page which is customizable to a certain extent.

I am looking for something which allows me use my own payment page (secpay does)...did i read it wrong, does paypal?

can i see your ecommerce site?

There are several ways of integrating paypal.

If you go to Paypal and click On merchant tools....

They have Paypal website payment standard, where they are redirected to the paypal site to pay.

They have Payment pro which they can pay directly on your site.

If you're looking to have your own payment page, I would probably recommend doing everything on your site, and using Payment Pro. Use SSL for the entire thing.

My ecommerce site is actually down currently (problems with getting SSL to work - post in Apache forum). But I can show it to you when it's up and going again.

cool, I think i may go with secpay as doing everything on my side would concern me using a cheap certificate and not a root certificate.

also, could you emails me the url to the site (thomasaustin@gmail.com) cos I'd be interested to see when ssl kicks in etc.

thanks again

tom

I will email you when it's up and going. You mention that you would be interested to see when it kicks in. I have my ecommerce site set to essentially have them log in before they can do anything useful.. like adding products or whatnot. So my SSL kicks in when they log in. But hopefully I'll have it up by the end of the month... If anyone ever responds to my post..

Also think I may check out this secpay to see what it's all about.

arrr...the backend

yes, the admin login see here (i will delete this after u reply)

I will put ssl on this (i4got about that)

I couldn't access that link. Says page cannot be found.

I also just checked out secpay. Stay tuned if you'd like to hear my thoughts.

cool, try the link now

Just checked out secpay.... Secpay seems to charge more for different things... with secpay, there is a monthly service charge ranging from 10 pounds to 225 pounds. There's also a connection fee of 50. And then if you make less than 60 transactions, it costs 39p per transaction.

In USD, that equates to:
10 pounds = 17.18 USD
225 pounds = 386.38 USD
50 pounds = 85.85 USD

39p = .67 cents

Paypal's charges:
No monthly or setup fee.
Up to $3000, 2.9% + .30

Even though transaction fees may be slightly higher with paypal, depending on the number of transactions, paypal ends up being cheaper. Also paypal seems to have a bigger feature set.

Now keep in mind.. I don't work for paypal, so I'm not trying to sell you.. Just giving you my thoughts..

cool, ill check it out

did you look at the link (it should work now)