Advice on affiliate store setup

I’m setting up an affiliate store where I will only sell products through links from merchants who will then ship their products and collect payment. I will receive a commission from the merchants through whatever affiliate program they are associated with. I need some expert advice in this area from someone at WP. Because of the way products will be ordered, shipped and paid for (through the merchant, not me), do I need an e-commerce template with a shopping cart and payment gateway? It seems to me that the best way to set it up would be with a blog template that I show the linked products, descriptions, and prices on, but if customers don’t see a shopping cart they might wonder about the legitimacy of my site, even though they’ll see a shopping cart on the merchant site eventually. And that brings me to my second question: If I’m displaying products from several different merchants who utilize several different affiliate programs such as Commission Junction, Shareasale, and Linkshare, how would it work when a customer on my site purchases products from different merchants who use different affiliate programs? Wouldn’t they need to pay from different shopping carts belonging to each merchant? It’s very confusing to me, and neither the merchants nor the affiliate programs know the answers to these questions. I hope someone there can help me, otherwise I don’t know how I’ll be able to set this up. Thank you very much.