secure credit card purchase

[Mohnie]

Hi,
I'm just beginning a web design and hosting business and I'm unsure how to implement a secure payment system. I'd rather not use a third party site but I'm not sure where to start. Is there a software that I can buy and upload to my own server or is it possible to create something myself? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

[afterburn]

What hosting enviroment?

[denisdekat]

Some web hosters have a shared SSL, or free SSL URL to use. Others do not. To make a site "secure" means that you will get yourself an SSL certificate, one with your domain name and such, so that your customers can shop via https without certificate warnings :) https encrypts your session so only the server and the client can see what is going on, anyone in between would see garbled text. HTTP sends things in ascci, as in, plain text.

Hope this helps :)