Setting up an e-commerce site

Hi All
Recently, I have been doing alot of reading about setting up an ecommerce
shop. I have come up with some questions, I hope you can answer them.

I believe to set up an ecommerce shop, you need one of the following :

1 - An ecommerce software. This software will allow me to create product
description. This software will also have a shopping cart. But this software
WILL NOT accept credit card payments. In order to accept credit card payments,
I need to have a merchant account.

2 - I believe there are some web-shops that provide shopping carts. These
web-shops also ACCEPT credit card payments from customers (I will not need to
have a merchant account with these web-shops).

I have special requirements:

I want to setup 5 different ecommerce shops, selling different products; and I
dont have a merchant account. Therefore, I think I need a web-shop software
that I can use to create product descriptions, shopping cart AND accept cedit
card payments.

Am I correct???

Could you identify some good web-shop software for United Kingdom.

kind regards

I use Actinic. You can set it up in various ways, they will also host transactions. www.actinic.co.uk.

Bob

So, if I buy a Actinic package, I can start accepting credit cards from customers. I would not have to create a merchant account with any bank. IS this correct?