How can I customize my Paypal check out page further?

I am building a website for a client that wants to sell photos on his website. It's set with Paypal, and I made the buttons link to Paypal. This all works fine except, the client wants his photos to display in the cart section, right before the check out page. Paypal allows you to customize this section, but it is very limiting. Additionally, there is no way it comes close to how I want it to appear. I just would like a solution so I can bypass the Paypal cart and go to my own customized cart instead and then to paypal for the final order.

Here is a link to exactly what I want to a accomplish. I hope this helps facilitate what I am trying to say:

http://www.widerange.org/photo/monte-fitz-roy-alpenglow/?gallery=favorites

Notice that when you click "add to cart", it s开发者_StackOverflow社区tays on his site and his cart features images of what you added. Paypal does not have this kind of feature, at least not to my knowledge.

I hope it's somewhat of a easy solution, and I would like to avoid going through a third party e-commerce site to do this.

Another question not as important and seems pretty basic:

I also would like to know exactly what the merchant ID key does in the paypal account and can I use it for any wordpress cart widgets? Seen a few that have some nice cart features that I think would be handy for clients. Fiddled with these and noticed that all they need is a merchant key# to have them functioning. My best guess is that it helps link to the paypal account? I am also aware that this could be referring to a number you get for your business account. Either way I am really just experimenting with all my options and just trying to find the cheapest solution for my client, but not that sleazy type of cheap. I'm pretty sure I can figure all this out with some research but figured while people are reading this might as well get as much basic info as possible.

Thanks so far for the responses they really help and is much appreciated.

The other two posters were on the right track but recommended the wrong product. For the size of your site it sounds like you will be best served with Website Payments Pro.

It is much cheaper than Payflow Pro and the integration is much much simpler. Payflow Pro would require you to get your own Merchant Account from your bank as it is just a gateway in addition to allowing you to charge paypal users. So with the exception of charging someones paypal account it is just a conduit to get to a Merchant Account provided to you by another institution (such as a bank or credit union) which does the actual charging of the card.

Website Payments Pro includes the merchant account so you don't have to worry about that.

you need to upgrade to "Payflow Payment Gateway" (there are 2 versions) to be able to do that, or switch payment processors,"Website Payment Standard" wont give you the customisation you want.

We use Paypal Payflow Pro. It basically gives you full control over the look and feel of your checkout page. It keeps the shopper on your domain during the entire transaction.

Transaction data is sent to Paypal through a secure API.

Unfortunately, this is considered somewhat advanced. You'll likely have to figure out how to integrate with Paypal by yourself. I find that many vendors try to discourage businesses from going down that route because many don't know what they are in for technically.

But if you're a good problem-solver and are capable of digging into a problem and breaking it down, and you understand very basic security, such as using HTTPS on your checkout page as well as with the Paypal API, then you are more likely to be successful.

Also, please don't print credit card numbers to log files or store them in the database. That's just not cool. Everytime someone does that, a kitten dies and Jon Skeet feels a tremor in the Stack Exchange force.