what is Google Checkout exactly?
Is it a payment gateway? Is it a shopping cart? Is it a bit of both? Google defines Google Checkout as “a checkout process that you integrate with your website”. More specifically, we can say that Google Checkout is more than a payment gateway but it does not quite amount to a full shopping cart plus gateway system. Some of the advantages of Google Checkout lie precisely in this hybrid nature, since any e-commerce store currently has a shopping cart installed. This shopping cart is most probably configured or customized to fit the merchant’s own business logic. Google Checkout, rather than requesting the amount payable and taking the customer’s data from the website, as typical gateways do, requests the following data: 1. A list of the products sold plus quantity and unit price 2. Generic shipping options, since the customer has not yet logged in at Google, so their shipping address is still unknown 3. Generic tax options, for the same reason With this information, Google authenticates
