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#30: Validating a Credit Card

Here's a brief overview of how online credit card transactions work. First, you need to find a merchant solution (an online provider, such as Authorize.net or Secpay.com) that provides you with a merchant account. This account is like a bank account, except that it allows you to process charges for credit card transactions. The merchant provider typically charges a per-transaction fee for each credit card action.

If you have a physical store that accepts credit cards, you almost certainly have a merchant solution. However, not all merchant solutions offer online transactions. The ones that do offer online transactions give you access to a payment gateway, a secure server for processing credit card charges. Usually, ...