Adding a payment mechanism to a web app

[Keith]

I wanted some advice on how to best go about adding 'payment' to my application.

What do people do:

1. Add PayPal - then how do you do this?
2. Accept a credit card payment then interface with Visa etc?

What is the simplest practice?

I have built a Login and wanted to make that conditional on a payment having been made.  In the PayPal case I presumed that you could include a mechanism that sent an amount and got an 'accepted' return code that could trigger the establishment of the login.

Any comments appreciated.

Thanks

Keith

[bijan]

Hi Keith,

It really depends on the visitors to your site. Can you assume that every single visitor will have a Paypal account? Will they sign up for a new Paypal account? I think the best solution is to use a payment gateway like Authorize.net.

This way you can be sure that your app will work with any processor that supports Authorize.net. Not sure where you are located, almost all the major processors in the US and Canada support Authorize.net.

You will pass the card info to Authorize.net using their API and get a Response back. You can then complete your transaction once the payment is approved.

http://developer.authorize.net/api/

Regards

Bijan

[terryd]

Hi Keith
Nettalk  usergroup webinar No 24 had a section on processing payments. May be a starting point.

[Keith]

Thanks Bijan, I will look at Authorize.  I thought that with PayPal the 'purchaser' didn't have to have a PayPal account - they would just use PayPal to make the payment with their credit card.

Terry, thanks for the link - more video watching!

Cheers

Keith

[Bruce]

>>  I thought that with PayPal the 'purchaser' didn't have to have a PayPal account - they would just use PayPal to make the payment with their credit card.

that's not universally true. ie it works in some countries, but not in others.

cheers
Bruce