I did a search and couldn't find if this has been answered.

Is the Paypal Website Payments Standard the only option available for Paypal? Is there (or will there be) a way to implement the PRO option?

Thanks,
Brian

You can use Website Payments Standard or PayPal Express. Right now PayPal Pro is not supported. We do have plans on adding support for that at some point.

As I understand it, PayPal Pro allows customers to checkout without ever leaving my site. That is, the customer enters shipping and credit card information on my site. Wouldn't that require a backend database for management of customer information? Also, doesn't this bring in PCI compliance issues and such?

YES! And liability.

So I would doubt CC plans to implement PayPal Pro into SCC. I'm not calling Scott a liar but perhaps he's hinting at a much more robust, database-driven shopping cart program for the future. Nah. Although I wouldn't mind seeing CC take the open-source shopping cart called OpenCart, eliminate any security issues, tweak the code, etc. and offer it for sale...

I can't comment too much on it yet, but I would keep an eye on S-Drive.

LOL, I guess said all that really needs to be said.

For those that are unsure what PCI compliance is and the issues it raises, you'll find a handy pdf guide at the link below.

www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/pa-dss_v2.pdf

Not quite sure where the liability would lie with things like S Drive if someone's credit cards were compromised, as the site owner is ultimately the one responsible for ensuring the security of that data, when they take direct payments via credit cards.

I personally am quite happy to stay with PayPal standard and Google Checkout with their 'pay per transaction' pricing. It's quick, clean and very workable.

Well if lawyers and politicians in England interpret the laws there like they do in the US, that's easy to answer. The liability lies with whomever they decide to prosecute. The dictionary should define the word interpret as the act of forked tongued devils bastardizing anything that was once decent and pure.