What you need to do first is talk to your hosting service provider
to determine if they have a shared certificate allowing you to
use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) security that would require
accessing the secured page(s) using the https: protocol handler.
If the hosting service provider does not support a shared certificate
you need to obtain one of your own.
Your hosting provider is supposed to provide a location where
you will locate a database which is where you will locate the
database that will be used to contain customer e-commerce data
with the exception of storing the actual credit card number which
is disallowed.
It sounds as if you want to process off-line. I'm out of touch
with the methodology that merchants are using at the moment
as the card processing industry has been changing a lot as of
late. You should have a good talk with your other business partners
that process cards for you and do some more research using
Google to find other merchants who can help explain the tricks
of the trade they are using at the moment.
Perhaps too you should consider using PayPal which is real
fast and easy and no longer requires customers to have a PayPal
account. There are some down-sides but it is the easiest and
most effective way to collect payments until you grow your
business to invest in more robust personalized solutions that
a developer will likely have to help you develop and deploy.
