How to commission artwork?

Hello everyone, I have a common question that I get that I don't know the answer to myself.

How do you go about commissioning artwork?

I mean, I know the basics, find a few artist that you like the style of, see if they are open to commissions currently, compare and contrast price range, send them a message to let them know you're interested and check if they are okay with the subject matter. However, then comes payment and this is where I get confused. If I wanted to use a credit card to make it, how would I go about that in a safe manner? I know a lot of artist use paypal, and to that you need a paypal account as well(I think), but what is paypal? I assume they take some money somewhere, but where and how much.

But yeah, I was hopping that some of our resident commissioners could give newbies like me and others a primer to make things a little more clearer.

Also, if you all are up to it, could add some artist to the commissionable artist thread that are comfortable with our subject matter that you have used before.
https://charmed.variousforum.com/t25-commissionable-artist

when using paypal there is two ways to use it

For people outside USA / Europe , we got the second option only

1) add money to your paypal account
here it act as any normal bank account , where you put money into it , either by wire transfer or bank transfer


2) link a credit card to your paypal account
this way , you are charged by paypal just like any online sites ( imagine you are buying something from amazon )

Thank you very much for this info, helps a lot.