Anyone know an independant , objective source of information?
for:
e-commerce solution. I know how to make the web page but im getting confused over all the players in the payment chain.

merchant account
Authorize.Net
my bank


I dont know who to beliveve about what I need to be totally set up to accept payments at the best price. too many middle men?

I plan to use :

AccountManager

what else do i need?

Well to put it simply, AccountManager is software that requires a gateway and payment proccessor to run. Deciding which to use is really a matter if preferance to your situation. Normally you would goto your bank if you have a large amount of money that you know will be going through your payment proccessor as they give you a better deal on bulk, while charging more for intial setup and larger monthly fees. But thier per transaction fees tend to be lower. This only works as said if you are doing a large amount of transactions. Authorize.net is a merchant account as well but makes its money more off transactions than monthly fees. They are better for those people or compnies who aren't doing transaction in the high numbers on a monthly basis. I personally use Authorize.Net and have been happy with them so far. I would contact both your bank and Authorize.net to get rate information and to see what services they provide in fraud situations.

If you have any questions feel free to ask, I have been to both my local bank and Authorize.Net as well as 3rd party payment proccessors like 2Checkout.com and PaySystems.com.