[waterside81]

We use Website Payments Pro on our site (shameless plug - http://www.littleheroes.com). I cannot say enough about how great their API is. I have Python code if you'd like, but it's really just straightforward POST. You can do subscriptions and one-time payments, as well as doing pre-auths.

And it's great because customers don't leave your site. You can withdraw the money from your PayPal account to your bank account anytime for free, so long that the amount is > $150. Otherwise they charge a small amount (can't remember, $5 maybe?). PayPal's fees are much better than many merchant account providers I've found. We pay $30/month for the account and then 2.9% + $0.25 for each transaction (so for a $100 transaction PayPal takes $3.15).

Plus they allow you to export your entire transaction history to CSV so you can load it into your own accounting system.

Strongly recommend PayPal to anyone who (A) can program and (B) wants to keep customers on their site.

As for PCI compliance and all that, why would you ever want to open up that bag of hurt and store people's credit cards? Let PayPal do what it's good at and stick to what you're good at.

[damoncali]

Just don't ever try to call them for support. It is awful. Simply awful.

[Skyline]

If you do enough volume, they assign you a dedicated support rep.