One of the easiest ways to take payments for sales at your web site is through PayPal. Although customers can use a balance in their PayPal accounts to pay for products and services at merchants that accept PayPal, customers can buy from you even without a PayPal account. Whether or not they have a PayPal account, customers can easily pay with credit cards or by transferring funds from a bank account.
Sign up for a free PayPal account here.
There are no set up fees, application fees, or monthly fees to accept PayPal at your web site. You only pay a small charge when you make a sale. Compare that to a typical merchant account, where you may pay an application fee of more than $100, then have monthly fees and minimums of $40 or more, even if you do not make a single sale in that month. If I were starting an online business today, I would start by accepting PayPal and only move to a merchant account when I had the volume to justify the expense. In fact, even though I have a merchant account I also accept PayPal, and I find that many of my customers prefer it.
Although PayPal integrates with most major shopping cart systems, you do not need a separate shopping cart to accept PayPal payments. PayPal gives you options with their shopping cart and buy now buttons that can be as simple as copying and pasting some code into your web site. Check resources like Drop Ship Lifestyle for more informaton.