Hi, i'm new to selling things online. But, i have a large number of items that I wish to sell on my website and I really don't want to have a "middleman" involved(ex. paypal etc...). Would It be a good idea to just write the code myself so that the transactions go straight to my bank account with out having somebody holding my money and paying out whenever THEY want to?
You need to obtain your merchant account for this, or virtual terminal, may be not easy. Programming this aint easy thing as well... At least you need to have a secure system, SSL and good anti-fraud system... So it's probably better to use some processing company which will get ya merchant account and allow you to use their processing platform
You need to have descent investment and have to go through long process for that, may be you can start of with middleman and when you are ready, replace them. Gud luck!
There's no way to circumvent the payment processor side of accepting credit cards. At best, you could register yourself as an ISO with Visa and MasterCard, but this cost about $10,000 per year just to be registered with them. If you add on to that the thousands of dollars it would take to develop a payment gateway and get it certified (Probably $50,000 - $100,000 minimum), there's little chance that it could be cost effective.