Alternative payment/shipping methods

[alcova]

Hi everyone, I was wondering if (and how) I can use other payment methods other than the "standard" ones. To be more precise, as I live in Italy, I'd like to use the payment gateway my bank offers for online payments (I have a retail shop and this would greatly simplify everything, having to deal with just one single counterpart - ie my bank). Is this possible? Has it to be custom developed by someone? Does it depend on the way the gateway works (ie in some cases there could be NO way to make it work with Miva)?

Same problem with the shipping methods. How can I connect my shop to an italian courier (not UPS/FEDEX/etc)? Do THEY have to develop an interface?

Thank you for any help.
Stefano

[ILoveHostasaurus]

For the payment option, someone would need to write a payment module for Merchant that made use of the gateway your bank provides. Another option may be to get a payment gateway that does work with Merchant and interface it with your merchant account, if your merchant account provider lets you use a gateway other than their own.

The same goes for the shipping option; if your courier offers real-time rate calculation, a shipping module that communicates with them would be needed. Alternatively, if they just base their rate on the weight, you could use Merchant's weight table-based shipping to include their rates.

[alcova]

anyone here can write such payment module? The gateway I'd like to use is called Bankpass and they also sent me specs in english.
If anyone wants to check them and see if this module is feasable, write me.

Stefano
info@alcova.biz