Advice - Payment Gateways

Just need some advice if anyone can help.

I'm starting up my first site, been trying since last year. I don't know how successful it would be but in-store we take WorldPay payments.

On the site I have setup paypal standard which (without testing) should take the payment on another page leaving me not to worry about SSL (I have a shared SSL certificate so the address url changes and the browser gives a warning)

My question is, should I bother with any other gateway or just stick to PayPal and if the site gets busy then pay for a more complete gateway?

I wanted to integrate Stripe, but there is no free extension yet and also they want SSL which I think might cause my site issues.

If you don't accept many online orders at this point, you're probably fine sticking with just PayPal. People are fairly familiar with it, and can still use credit cards without having a PayPal account (though that's not always clear, so you might want to make a note of it for your customers). If your site gets busy in the future, then you can always add another payment method where people can check out directly on your site (which is what I always prefer when I'm shopping online).

You should note that an SSL certificate is still a good idea, since people are typing in their personal information, and like to see the green lock icon in their browser bar during a checkout process. It's not necessary, but it might help some people feel more secure.

If you do decide to go with Stripe in the future, I have a Stripe Payment Gateway that you can use. It's not free, but I guarantee it works, and will always fix any issues if you have issues with it on your site. It's also available on opencart.com here:

http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... on_id=4962

I use Stripe for OpenCartX.com, and love their features and admin interface. I've been with them almost since they launched, and they've added a bunch of features and new countries since then, so they continue to work on improving their services. (This probably doesn't matter to you, but their API is one of the best I've ever worked with, which means you can trust they have quality developers working for them.)

Feel free to contact me www.getclearthinking.com/contact if you have any questions about the extension in the future.

Hi Jonathan

Thanks for the response. I did see your extension and I have earmarked it for the future - it looks impressive.

I can get authority to use paid extensions but as we are developing the whole site in-house with little knowledge it is currently more of a "gamble and if it works then we do it properly" type of scenario.

Appreciate your feedback though...makes a lot more sense.