Accept credit card payments on your websites.
List of companies who will process online payments and supply merchant accounts for websites

Accepting credit cards is essential if you want to sell off your site.
There are no two ways around it. A recent poll revealed that 88% of online buyers use their credit-card.

But unfortunately not all of us can walk into our own bank and ask for merchant Status.

What to do?

Fortunately there are now many companies who can help you out - 'payment bureaux' for a price. And the price changes dramatically from company to company.

Starting out, it's best to bite the bullet and go for perhaps a higher percentage of sale charge rather than a lower charge and a large upfront fee.

Testing the waters with your site over a few months should tell you whether you're on to a winner, and those profits can always help you change the company who is offering you a merchant account.

Rather than list tens of companies, here are the few which I use,have found to offer a good service, are established and come with recommendations:

US $'s ONLY:

2CheckOut.com
One time only set up fee of $49.00, after that you only pay for sales, sell nothing, pay nothing. 2CheckOut collects a 5.5% commission on each sale plus a $0.45 charge per sale. There are no leases, no monthly fees, no application fees, no gateway fees, no additional card company or third party charges and no statement fees. Only US $'s.
I've use this company for one of my 'US' sites and am very happy with the service.

Cardservice International
Card Processing Accept all major credit cards, including MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB, as well as ATM/debit cards. Check Acceptance Provides merchants with an additional way to accept noncash payments from customers.

Charge.Com
Established 6 year company offering the lowest charges on the net - backed by a 110% guarantee. Recommendations come from the like of Apple, Excite and AOL. Free setup, application, shopping cart.

Electronic Transfer Inc
No set up fees with this company. Credit card processing company with one of the highest approval rates in the US. Buy now buttons, shopping carts, accept cheques (well, US checks).

Verotel.com
Webmasters worldwide use Verotel to sell the tickets for their content subscriptions on the Internet. Free box office for online subscriptions, Credit card and check billing options, no setup fee and no monthly minimums. Also has telephone billing option.

Accept Multinational Payments:

Clickbank.Com
This company is ideal if you are selling an 'electronic' product, i.e. not shipping an actual product.
You can also link up with hundreds of other companies with relevance to your core business, and earn commissions.(Or even start a site just with a selection of these links). Sign-up is free.

Cybersource
CyberSource is a worldwide provider of secure electronic payment, credit card fraud management, and verification software and services. Solutions to transact sales online, in contact centres and at point-of-sale and to fully automate the order acceptance process.

PlanetPayment
Provider of Internet payment solutions for e-businesses globally, in a host of currencies. They enable e-business to accept major credit cards in a secure online environment in over 140 countries. The solutions they provide are compatible with most shopping carts and web site technologies making implementation and set up an easy process. Based in America with an operating subsidiary in the UK.

Worldpay
One of the major e-commerce solutions companies. Services range from entry level storebuilder and secure online payment processing solutions to high-end multi-currency transaction processing systems for larger established companies.

UK Specific:

NoChex
UK only service letting people pay for services/goods with their debit card. No chargebacks, no set up or monthly charges, instant availability of funds, and 1% transaction charges.

Non-credit card services:

PayPal
PayPal lets users send and receive money online. You can send money to anyone, and PayPal charges it to your bank account or credit card. It's faster, safer, and easier than mailing a check. Starting to be seen widely on many web and auction sites. NOW OFFERS TRANSACTIONS IN UK£'s AND EURO's

eGold
e-gold is an electronic currency, issued by e-gold Ltd., a Nevis corporation, 100% backed at all times by gold bullion in allocated storage.
e-gold is integrated into an account based payment system that empowers people to use gold as money. Specifically, the e-gold payment system enables people to Spend specified weights of gold to other e-gold accounts. Only the ownership changes - the gold in the treasury grade vault stays put.