When is it PA-DSS Compliant, or SSL Secure?

[dankfresh]

I'm developing an eCommerce store for a pretty big company.  This is kind of a technical question, so hopefully someone will be able to fill me in. 

I've used OSCommerce, OpenCart, Magento Community, & Prestashop as eCommerce stores before, but all of those have ended up with someone using PayPal Merchant Accounts.  What if I need this store to go through a payment gateway?  What steps can you take to make a SSL transaction?

I see that Magento Professional offers a PA-DSS secure software package, but it's $2500.  I'd be willing to pay for a payment gateway but do you embed this on your site somehow?  How do you transfer information securely to these external providers? 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[wayzgoose]

If you contact a couple of payment gateways (SagePay etc) they will have full instructions on how to integrate the credit card payments and also the different forms of collecting payments depending on what your client requires.

[JhnStcks]

Um hold on a second, you say

I'm developing an eCommerce store for a pretty big company.

but then you ask about the process of using SSL, shouldn't you already know how to do this if you have a contract for a big company?

I'm pretty experienced with Prestashop and there are a lot of payment modules around now for all sorts of different gateways, you would know this if you had used Prestashop.

Activating SSL for secure transactions is also very easy with Prestashop, basically selecting that option in the back-end and saving the option.  You would also know this if you had used Prestashop.

I feel sorry for the "pretty big company" if you haven't managed this yet.

[dankfresh]

I don't have a contract with a big company.  I work for a company and was asked to manage this process.  I'm sorry you took this as a presumptuous boast, but I can assure you I am quite amateur in the realm of eCommerce...which is why I'm here, asking for help. 

I am aware Prestashop offers modules to include payment gateways and SSL security, but again, as an amateur, I have never had to become involved with any of these because they weren't required at the time.  I wasn't sure if there was additional steps I should take. 

I was hoping someone could just fill me in as to the process of how these are incorporated into the shopping carts, which both of you did, so I suppose I'm grateful for that.  I know most shopping carts have a back-end option of SSL security, but there are additional steps including getting certificate, or having one provided through your host, etc (I thought), so I was hoping for more information on that.

Either way, thanks for the replies.