Recommendations for Website Payment Systems? 76
An anonymous reader asks: "I run a smallish website that provides stock quotes, charts, etc for a very under-reported stock market. (I won't link here due to the Slashdot Death Ray effect, and because this is a real question, not an advertisement). Over the recent weeks, many of my site members have been asking if they could make a small contribution to help off-set costs, which I am considering. 'Tip Jars' seem tacky and I know many people aren't comfortable with Paypal. So, should I roll my own, or are there any highly recommended ways of doing this that I am missing? Any suggestions?"
Paypal? (Score:5, Insightful)
The money you lose from people who enjoy bragging about how they refuse to use Paypal will be more than made up for by the time you save not having to implement something like this yourself.
Re:Paypal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. I started by accepting only PayPal on my site, and then started accepting credit cards as well. The credit card stuff is a huge hassle. It's not just the hassle of setting it up initially, it's the hassles that come after that. For instance, I got a $1000 order from a woman an Nigeria who was using a stolen CC number. The CC companies I've had to deal with generally have horrible support. One thing you might not realize is that when you set this kind of thing up, you're not just setting up a business relationship with the company you signed up with. Although the company I signed up with was PayQuake (not recommended, BTW), I've actually had to work with all of the following: PayQuake, Authorize.net, Global Payments, American Express, Discover. Discover kept pestering me to add their card to my account. I said no, because my business is 95% wholesale, and people don't use Discover for wholesale. Well, all of a sudden, I started getting charged a certain amount every month to take Discover. They'd just gone ahead and done it without my permission.
With hindsight, CC ordering is only worth it if you're really doing serious amounts of business.
web head-to-head on Paypal and pals (Score:1)
Four micropayment systems compared with respect to the words/phrases:
excellent [compare-stuff.com]
no hassle [compare-stuff.com]
efficient [compare-stuff.com]
extremely helpful [compare-stuff.com]
As you'll see, I'm trying to claw back my hosting fees with Amazon product links... Hasn't worked yet
Re:Paypal? (Score:5, Informative)
You can now accept credit card payments over PayPal as well, if you're a verified member and you have PayPal linked to a bank account. It's worked really well for my (very small) business... PayPal charges fees on each transaction, obviously, but it's a turnkey solution... none of the hassles described by the above poster, who had to deal with separate credit card merchants.
There are some downsides to PayPal, but those are well-documented all over the 'net. But most of the PayPal "horror stories" I've seen don't sound any worse than typical hassles you'd get with any credit card processor.
The typical PayPal "horror story" seems to go like this. "This guy PayPal'd me N dollars! Then PayPal reversed the payment because there was evidence of credit card fraud. Now I don't have my #)*&#)%%^ N dollars! WTF, (*&%*$% PAYPAL!"
My advice: if you do go with PayPal, take extra care to let your customers know they can pay with PayPal via credit card even if they don't have a PayPal account. The perception is that you have to sign up to pay with PayPal, and it's not true any more.
I've only been using them for a month, though. So take this very tentative endorsement with a grain of salt. But it was easy to implement and so far, so good. (And I *have* implemented e-commerce solutions from scratch before using other products like PayFlowPro, at previous jobs. Just FYI.)
Re: Normal CC processing is no free lunch! (Score:5, Informative)
No. You're 100% wrong. Regular credit card processing companies will freeze your account. I've seen it happen first hand.
One company that my company makes e-commerce, inventory management and meat point of sale software for had over $50,000 in already processed charges for a week withheld without warning. The reason given (after the fact) was that too much of the company's business was coming from the Internet, and the CC processor was "nervous" (the exact word used.) This wasn't a sudden influx, in fact it wasn't more than a few percent different from the previous four weeks or so at the time. No unusual / atypical number of chargebacks was being encountered, nothing out of the ordinary was going on at all, other than the business was slowly and steadily becoming more successful for various reasons.
So what happened? The money was held for six months before they grudgingly gave it over, admitting there was no problem. By that time, they were no longer processing this place's charges, but that didn't make them move any faster.
A new credit card processor was found, one of the local banks covered the week's gap in income with a 90-day note based on the company's history with the bank, and the day was saved - no thanks to the cc processor. The business still had to come up with 50 grand out of the blue to pay off the note to the local bank, but they were healthy and they pulled it off.
Consider, if this particular business wasn't a pretty darned good operation, that might have killed them. As it was, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, as you well might imagine -- no one needs a week's cash flow knocked into limbo without warning.
The CC processors can do it, they will do it, they have done it.
When you sign up with a credit card processor, you need to read the terms, line by line and with careful attention paid as to how any particular situation described or alluded to will affect your business if the processor exercises the option described. Then you need to plan what you will do in each of those situations. If you're not prepared, you'll have to take your pleasure in complaining to your friends and family, because that's all the recourse you have.
The cold, hard fact of the matter is that credit card processing and sourcing companies hold all the cards, no pun intended.
They agressively advertise to consumers that they (the consumer) will never be liable for fraudulent use of their card. Which is true. Then they turn around, every time, and dump the fiscal damage on the merchant.
That's right. If you sell something via CC, even if you validate the address and ship to that address, you can still have a chargeback, you are in no way protected. You get lines like "my boyfriend used my card without my permission" and you're flat out of your merchandise, the funds are taken directly from your account, and that's the end of it. The cops in some remote city or podunk town won't lift a finger to do anything about it, and for 99% of the merchandise involved, the merchant can't afford to pursue it.
Who isn't hurt by this? (1) The consumer, (2) the thief (who may be the consumer!) (3) the credit card company and (4) the credit card processor. The merchant takes the hit, each and every time. You can't opt out or you can't process cards, which probably means you and everyone who works for you need to get a McJob.
So don't underestimate what a "normal" cc company can do to you. Paypal is no better or worse. Behave yourself, co-operate with any investigation and don't hesitate to refund when asked, and you will probably not have to deal with a frozen or closed account. Try not to grit your teeth when you have to pay for a blatent rip-off; it's part of the landscape, and these companies have rigged it so you cannot fix the problem. Complain in any major way, and you could have all your
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
I've never personally had my funds locked out, but I am f
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
This wasn't my experience. In my case, they simply reversed the charges. Then again, I'm new to Paypal (about 1.5 months) and this was a relatively small dollar amount ($36). I don't know what they did in the past or how they might handle suspicious transactions involving larger dollar amounts.
Freezing both accoun
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
They are welcome to try to EFT funds from my bank account. It's kept delibretly empty for this reason. If they try to take funds out without my authorization, then my bank gets involved. They have a little more bite then I d
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
I do that too but it isn't perfect. If your bank is anything like mine they'll just send the money and charge an overdraft fee. It's still better than having thousands of dollars locked up over a small dispute though.
If they try to take funds out without my authorization, then my bank gets involved.
When you sign up for PayPal you DO authorize them to take money out of your attached bank account pr
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
you may want to sue them or even press charges for fraud.
Re:Paypal? Great in the US, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Paypal? Great in the US, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Paypal? (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, Paypal is my first choice for all online transactions. Every system has problems, but Paypal doesn't do all that badly, compared to the alternatives.
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
That's the only gripe I have with Paypal. Other than that, never had a problem with it.
I have, however, heard a lot of horror stories about people whose checking account is emptied or locked without due process, etc. All of it mght be exageration, but do your homework before comitting yourself.
Re:Paypal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Excuse the bluntness, but that is pure bull crap! Take a look at the thousands of horror stories in the Paypal Wall of Shame on http://paypalwarning.com/ [paypalwarning.com].
I would say that class actions lawsuits and thousands of horror stories are very legitimate reasons to be "uncomfortable" with dealing with a company. Unless you are an idiot.
As it says on the paypalwarning.com site:
Can PayPal hold my money with no explanation? The answer is YES.
Can PayPal freeze my account for no reason? The answer is YES.
Can PayPal take money out of my account without my knowledge?
The answer is YES.
We used to use Paypal to sell on eBay but after finding it impossible to to update our credit card and having no phone number to resolve problems, we started searching the net to see what kind of other problems people were having. When we found the Wall of Shame, we closed the account and closed the bank account it was linked to before we became one of the victims.
I wish more people would boycott companies that treat people so dirty and quit rewarding them just because it appears to be convenient today.
Re:Paypal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can a bank freeze my account for no reason? The answer is YES.
Can a bank take money out of my account without my knowledge? The answer is YES.
Guess I better get my money out of the bank.
Re:Paypal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Paypal? (Score:1)
You can, but it will not do any good. Unlike a credit card, there is no way to reverse a draft from your bank account. Also, banks, at least in America, have absolutely no security. They are to stupid to even provide any kind of simple access control list so that you can white list and/or black list merchants from arbitrarily pulling any amount of money they choose out of your account. Anybody with a merchant
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
This is wrong see Electronic Funds Act
http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-3
Re:Paypal? (Score:1)
When I spoke with my bank (Norwest at the time) about the unauthorized drafts from my account that I mentioned in my other posting, they said there was nothing they could do about the drafts that had already taken place. I could pay $30 for a stop payment on the next draft attempt but there was nothing stopping them from turning right around and doing
Re:Paypal? (Score:1)
Why in the world you would you ever agree, online or in writing, to allow anybody to take funds from your account?
What's wrong with "If you want my money, send me a bill and I'll give you a cheque."
Re:Paypal? (Score:1)
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
the resolution section is at
http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-3
Re:Paypal? (Score:1)
No, it is not limited to that. "the access device" is any means in which to access your account to electronically transfer funds. Here is part of the definition from section 205.2 Definitions from the Electronic Funds Transfers regulations. [fdic.gov]
Re:Paypal? (Score:2)
FWIW I had the exact same conversation with my bank (Bank One) a couple of years ago.
Re:Paypal? (Score:1)
I would never use paypal unless I had a separate bank account for them to use, and that doesn't have any overdraft allowance, etc. So, even if paypal wants to try to suck money out, there isn't anything for them to get.
Re:Paypal? (Score:1)
Paypal (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Paypal (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider a seperate bank (not just a seperate account). Do not leave large amounts of money floating in either PayPal Land or the attached bank account.
Make sure your bank(s) have firm instructions not to transfer money out to PayPal w/out your say so. Or at least tell them what will and what won't be normal account behavio
Re:Paypal (Score:1)
This one never does any good. The banks refuse to
bank acct access controls (Score:1)
anyways, I know some banks specifically allow you to block access by acct number if thats what you want to do.
I didn't know about the $30 fee for stop-payment orders... that seems like a real dick move on their part.
Does your CC company do the same thing when you tell them to cancel/reverse charges?
Re:bank acct access controls (Score:1)
There would not be anything very difficult about it. Just a simple data file that has the company names, or other identifying information about the company, to blacklist or white list. You could do simple string compares to the the information from the incoming request. You could set transaction limits with simple less than / greater than comparisons. It's grad
yahoo stores (Score:4, Interesting)
Rolling your own payment system (Score:5, Insightful)
A creative solution I heard once was to auction "thanks" on eBay. For $2.50, you could buy the seller's "thanks", and you could buy as many (or as few) as you liked through the usual Dutch auction process. I don't know if anyone ever actually did this, but you might want to consider it.
Personally, I always use PayPal for website donations. I've never had anyone object.
Re:Rolling your own payment system (Score:1)
Re:Rolling your own payment system (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rolling your own payment system (Score:2)
zerg (Score:4, Interesting)
Ignore people's unease, the real reason you don't want to go w/ paypal is the massive bite they take out of whatever people send you. You can't even ask people to donate a quarter because the entire quarter disappears.
Google for "amazon honor system" (minus quotes). I can't link you directly because it'll probably end up w/ a referral to me in the URL. ^^;; It might be what you're looking for.
Alternatively, for webcomic creators, Scott McCloud suggests [scottmccloud.com] trying BitPass [bitpass.com], Yaga [yaga.com] or Peppercoin [peppercoin.com]...
Re:zerg (Score:2)
Of course, PayPal works great for me as a purchaser also, so I guess I'm just not angry enough in general or something...
Re:zerg (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you're absolutely right, the goal should be to make it easier on the donor, otherwise they'll just shrug and walk away...
Re:zerg (Score:1)
[OT] Re: protoss (Score:2)
Easy (Score:2)
get over it (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not begging. It's not tacky. It's just common sense. Bandwidth and time cost money. You can't distribute them for free like you can information. It makes sense to pay for them. Like I always say, "Information wants to be free, but bandwidth wants to be expensive."
After a while you can experiment with the other obscure services that people use, but PayPal is *it*. Yeah, "paypal sucks" but most people haven't had any problems (including myself). Just don't pretend they are a bank.
Too late (Score:1, Offtopic)
Bitpass (Score:2, Informative)
Whatever you do, do it carefully... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your best bet is to use something established like paypal or western union. The risks from a few customers not using the service because of it's name/reputation is must less significant than a lawsuit resulting from a mistake in your DIY financial solution.
Paypal has been a great solution for me.
Nothing wrong with Paypal for donations (Score:4, Informative)
what's the site? (Score:2)
Amazon Honor System (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're based in the US, the Amazon Honor System [amazon.com] is an option if your users are PayPal-wary.
EricSee your HTTP headers here [ericgiguere.com]
Re:Amazon Honor System (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Amazon Honor System (Score:1)
Send donations to... (Score:2, Interesting)
If the contributions were going to be typically large and more numerous (more than $20 and thousands a month), then it would make sense to talk to your bank to get one of those machines to make CC transactions. Then ask for their credit card information on a secure section of the site. Store the transactions in a database, and then type them all in at the end of
Re:Paypal security (Score:3, Funny)
hyperwallet.com (Score:3, Informative)
Big players (Score:3, Interesting)
a) Paypal - sure a few people get turned off by it, but they are probably not your audience. This is the easiest way if you want to accept payments in USD/CAD/JYP/GBP/EUR or AUD.
b) Moneybookers (moneybookers.com) - like paypal with a few differences. If you sign up for thier merchant program you can use them to accept CCrds in the same way as you can with Paypal, except that.
1. No chargebacks. Moneybookers is "hard" currency, once you have it it's yours to keep.
2. More currencies. Moneybookers allows you to accept payments (and hold balance) in more currencies than paypal.
3. To pay via credit card your users will (the first time they do) will either need an SMS capable cellphone handy (they send a confirmation code to it so they at least have a known-good cellphone number) or a fax machine.
The other options (2checkout.com, a real merchant account etc..) would likely be too expensive and too much trouble.
Still reversals! (Score:2)
Moneybookers do look far more organised than any other merchant acquirer pass through i have seen, and i would decidely prefer to deal under UK law with a firm i can locate in my neighborhood, but you are wrong to say that chargebacks do not happen. I see no way that a _customer_ of a merchant network / acquirer can unilaterally negate terms which the network (Visa e.g.) imposes universally on all merchants.
I
CASH (Score:2)
PayPal+eSellerate (Score:4, Informative)
I went through the same problem last month for the website of my company (see sig). PayPal may be OK for "donations" but it is not good enough for e-commerce websites. PayPal is down or broken in some way about 100% of the time. Also, many people (including me) don't want to pay with PayPal because of all the problems you can read on PayPalSucks [paypalsucks.com].
So I offer CC payments through eSellerate [esellerate.net]. I handle my own shopping cart and the user picks the payment means when he checks out. eSellerate is good for me because the commission is 10% flat, without a fixed fee. Most similar services charge something like "5% or $2, whichever is higher". My product cost $6.99, so $2 is a lot of money.
Also, you can really customize the checkout process on eSellerate so that the customer can't tell the difference between your site and the eSellerate checkout site. You can't do that with PayPal.
As a conclusion, please do not offer PayPal only. PayPal is not a reliable company and lot's of people avoid them.
Bitpass (Score:3, Informative)
Alex.
Dissent. (Score:2, Informative)
Paypal (Score:2)
Three lines of thought (Score:2)
This should NOT, however, be taken as proof of anything. It is curious, it is worth keeping an eye on, and if anyone from Paypal visits Slashdot, I'd seriously suggest running a quick security audit. It is doubtful that that's where the problem is, but I can afford to cancel one card far more than t
do like zgeek does!! (Score:1)
Its a little like slashdot but run by an Australian and much much funnier.
Anyway he justs puts his bank account up on the web.
You probably have a company account or such that you can use instead of your personal account.
http://forums.zgeek.com/faq.php?faq=new_ faq_zgeek#faq_new_faq_who
Recommendations for Payment Systems (Score:1)
2checkout isn't bad (Score:2)
Similar to paypal actually...