Rick Munarriz reports in the Motley Fool that since implementing Google Checkout on their site, TheFurniture.com is closing 8% to 12% of its sales through Google's platform. PayPal used to seal the deal on 8% to 10% of the site's transactions, but that has now been whittled away to just 3% to 4% of total sales.

Eric Pfanner, of the International Herald Tribune, reports in the New York Times that Congress passed legislation over the weekend that would make it a crime to use credit cards or online payment systems for Internet betting. As a result, several online-gambling companies said Monday that they planned to stop doing business with customers in the United States — by far the largest market for Internet gambling.

Gateway offerings from Authorize.net, Verisign, Plug 'n Pay, and LinkPoint are compared thoroughly at merchant-account-services.org.

PayPal's benefits and detriments are outline by Rich Brooks of flyte news media. The occasional horror stories one hears from merchants utilizing PayPal are, he concludes, going to happen with any big company.

Ryan Welton of practicalecommerce.com outlines key features to consider when choosing or switching shopping carts.

The areas addressed include function, shipping issues, payment processing, support, technical considerations and report generation.

Karen E. Klein writing in businessweek.com offers a checklist covering the major tasks and costs involved in setting up a business to sell products or services on the Internet.

Dianna Dilworth offers DM News' Special Report on E-Commerce Platforms & Software: Key Trends in E-Commerce, also available on PDF format.

The report features numerous comments from e-commerce industry officials as to where ecommerce is heading.

Newer online technologies, which include the ability to make a purchase by keying in a checking account number or PIN to debit a checking account, are moving mainstream, according to Gail Liberman and Alan Lavine, as reported in marketwatch.com.

More merchants are accepting them offline.