[Molly Sherrick Phifer]

Hi Enzie!

You can open a personal Paypal account and upgrade to "merchant" status for free. I have had such an account for free for years. That type of account does allow you to accept credit cards, and even has easy to integrate software so that you can send bills by e-mail (which have buttons taking the receiver to a payment page) and even pop a payment button onto your webpage.

On the Paypal website, look at the Merchant Tools tab. If you click on Website Payments Standard, you'll see what all the tools are as well as the fees, etc. It's really quite reasonable.

Payments go into your Paypal account, but it is easy to move money back and forth between that account and a bank account of your designation.

Great topic!