For-profit forum question: recurring billing?

[Muzzleflash]

I am starting a forum where there are two usergroups- one joins free after a verification with me, and the other pays a subscription fee.

I know vBulletin has a built in subscription system (paypal is out of the question as the forum is of an adult nature).

My question is, what would be the best setup for involving recurring monthly billing to someone's credit card? Would I need a merchant account with someone else setup with my own custom shopping cart created? I can see that the built in subscription method works only for people that have signed up.

If there's a way for people to pay first, it saves having people sign up on the forum first in order to subscribe, but it means that my forum would have to generate the account for them after the payment is processed.

Here are two quotes from cozycampus.com's adult webmaster forum that stuck in my head:

your own recurring billing system (do not depend on the payment solution's recurring billing system or you will be locked in with them)

Billing Processors - You can go with an independentant merchant account and do all your own processing, and scrubbing, but if you're new to the game I would suggest you NOT go this route. Get your feet wet with a 3rd party biller or two or three. And setting this up will require more than merely a desire. Either you will need the expertise to plug it all in or you'll need to hire someone to do it for you - and a designer can't do this.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.. I might be the very first vBulletin adult website with a tour page and everything

Oh, and here's a VERY nice looking system: Ikobo

http://www.cozycampus.com/theforum/s...ighlight=ikobo

Apparently it's all the benefits of a merchant system with none of the bad things.. all it lacks is a rebilling feature. (and that's coming soon).

Maybe when they offer recurring billing, I can get an integration with them going like paypal already has..