Thanks Jeffro! There were plenty of challenges in developing Cart66 Hosted. Building all the features for e-commerce (coupons, shipping, taxes, digital products, memberships, subscriptions, etc.) is a challenge. Keeping the functionality the same no matter which of the 50+ payment gateways you pick is hard. For instance, not all payment gateways support storing credit card data or recurring billing, so we developed our own built-in recurring billing engine. The most challenging part, however, was the security.

As complicated as PCI compliance is for an individual building themselves a website, it is even more so for companies offering an e-commerce service. Most people don't know this, but PCI compliance is far more involved than just installing an SSL certificate. Even the simple tricks like submitting credit card details over javascript don't cut it for payment applications. So we spent over 2 years researching, inventing, and implementing the Cart66 Cloud solution so that it not only meets but far exceeds the PCI requirements. For instance, we don't just secure the collection and transmission of cardholder data, we also secure product definitions, order history - we even secure the individual customers' shopping carts.

Now, WordPress folks can build e-commerce sites like they build any other kind of site. What once was expensive, complicated, and confusing you now don't even have to think about. Wrapping up all that security (and the technology behind it) in a way that you barely even notice it was the primary challenge in developing this product.