Hi,
I've recently been considering using a merchant account and payment gateway rather than paypal (which is what i've been using for the past yr) and am a bit confused by all the options that I'm faced with.
First of all - is there a difference between a third party processor and a payment gateway? Are paypal and Authorize.net both third party payment processors?
Secondly - I understand that i'd need to open an online merchant account. Is it possible to have a company do my payment processing and NOT have a bank account with them? I noticed that some companies offering payment processing do have merchant account links on their webpages and some do not. For instance, Authorize.net doesn't have a merchant account link but first atlantic commerce does. Does this mean that first atlantic commerce offers merchant accounts in addition to payment processing and authorize.net doesn't?? Or will first atlantic help me open a merchant account at some bank?
As you can probably tell I'm quite confused at the moment and am confusing myself more with all the reading and research/reading i'm doing.
Any help clarifying my spinning head will be much appreciated!!
Konan

Authorize.net is a payment gateway but you cannot use it to process credit cards without a true merchant account. You may wish to check with Paypal, 2checout, Chronopay, worldpay, moneybookers etc as well depending on your need whether you are looking for a merchant account or a 3rd party processors.

You really need to read this; http://www.merchant-account-services...ounts-compared

spam? duh!! I guess i've read this post elsewhere

Right...through extensive reading and much web surfing I've more or less figured what i asked in my previous post and have narrowed down my choice of payment gateway to 2 possible suppliers, one large and well known (Authorize) and the other relatively small (first atlantic commerce).
The only real difference I see between the two is that first atlantic's website talks about merchant accounts with their partner banks. I assume that when they say this they don't actually own a bank but have some sort of arrangement with different banks. Not sure if I understood it correctly so here's the link if anyone would like to cross check (http://www.firstatlanticcommerce.com..._accounts.aspx). My question is this: is there any advantage to going along with a gateway's partner bank as opposed to opening an account with a bank not linked to the gateway? Is this even an option?
Any input would be greatly appreciated!

And in response to someone's comment, yes, I am posting elsewhere. Actually I'm posting in quite a few forums to get balanced opinions/advice. I figure the more I know the better my chances of getting it right the first time and not wasting money.