grasshoper

I'm building a site where users will be paying each other, with the site taking a cut out of each transaction. I'm having some trouble deciding on how to handle payment processing and could use some advice. I think there are really two ways to handle these payments.

1) I could accept payment into my own account and credit the users on my own system. I can then pay them when they request a withdrawal.

2) I could split each transaction into two parts, with my cut going into my account and the rest going directly to the user.

The first way seems the most reasonable and seems to be the way most sites do this, but I am scared of essentially storing other people's money in my account (especially after reading stories of Paypal accounts being frozen). I am also unclear about the legal issues of doing either method.

Any tips on how to proceed? Any payment processor recommendations? I am a poor college student, so cost of setup is a major issue for me. Thanks!

Edit: the site is a marketplace, not some type of money-transferring service

I know that there are a lot of freelancers on this site. I am interested in doing freelance web development but am wondering how to get started. How did you land your initial contracts? If you were just starting out again, how would you go about doing so? How much should you charge starting out?