Google has released to the public its google checkout service.

Google Checkout is a checkout process that you integrate with your website, enabling your customers to buy from you quickly and securely, using a single username and password. And once they do, you can use Checkout to charge their credit cards, process their orders, and receive payment in your bank account.

There's good review at PCworld regarding google checkout. Dennis O'Reilly made sample transaction.

Google Checkout stores your credit card number, mailing address, and other ordering information. You can view all of the orders you place through the service on a single page, and Google limits how much of your information it shares with its vendor partners.

While having a single repository for all your orders makes makes online purchases much faster and simpler (and potentially more secure), Gmail users and other people already registered with a free Google service may have to beef up their security--one log-in name and password opens them all.

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