For a small business web site is there a cheap way to securely transfer data?

[Trevor]

My grandpa needs a way to securely transfer data like credit card information from a customer so he can put it into the web site he already has to have people pay him. He needs a way for people to put their info and transfer the info to him on the site or on a site like paypal but it has to be cheap.

[Jake]

Just sending them to paypal for the secure transaction is the easiest thing to do, you should be able to find a web site script for sending people there, you need at least the middle level account to accept payments.

For an ecommerce site to accept payment information they need an SSL certified page, identified by an https: address, it encrypts days before is goes over the internet to prevent 3rd parties, like neighbor kids tapped into someone's wifi from intercepting the data.

One would need a merchants account to setup card processing on your own site some services provide te SSL page so you dont have to invest the time and money to set it up.

Another possibility are the many smart phone credit card scanners (like square) meant for flea market sales, these may allow you to manually key in CC#s as well while taking orders over the phone, they tack on some percentage for his less secure manual entry payment method.

[Jim S]

Is this a one-time thing? If so, have the customer send the card in two email messages: first 12 digits, wait a half hour, and the remaining 3 or 4 digits with the expiration. He could do that in the clear. Customer should delete both emails sent if they are on a site like gmail/aol/yhoo/hotmail.

If he collects money for something on his site more than 4 times a month, he really needs to implement the full PayPal "accept web payments" on his site. I had it done for mine pretty cheap (100 bucks) by these guys: http://webmaestroyvr.info/services.php