Best way to set up online payments on our website?
Discussion
Hi,
Hope this is the right section of the forum for this. I'm after some advice from the web-savvy of PH.
We're in the process of putting the finishing touches to the website at work and we're looking at how to charge people for purchases. We'll be taking one-off payments and also potentially setting up standing orders and I wondered what's involved in setting up a 'checkout' type thing on the website? What's actually needed to go from the form where they enter their card details to the point the money enters our account?
I hasten to add the site is being done through a developer and I'm almost completely clueless about web design, so don't be afraid to state the obvious!
Chris
Hope this is the right section of the forum for this. I'm after some advice from the web-savvy of PH.
We're in the process of putting the finishing touches to the website at work and we're looking at how to charge people for purchases. We'll be taking one-off payments and also potentially setting up standing orders and I wondered what's involved in setting up a 'checkout' type thing on the website? What's actually needed to go from the form where they enter their card details to the point the money enters our account?
I hasten to add the site is being done through a developer and I'm almost completely clueless about web design, so don't be afraid to state the obvious!
Chris
Paypal is the easiest and cheapest method.
I'm not a fan of Google Checkout, mainly because I'm not a fan of Google in general at the moment (think about it - they control who finds your website and your online turnover - if that isn't a conflict of interest I don't know what is).
Where Paypal scores over proper merchants is that you don't need DNA to open the account. It doesn't cost to open the account (I hate set up fees), and they don't withhold your money. I got the arse many years ago with WorldPay, and dumped them for Paypal of all people.
Bad things about Paypal - they see merchants as enemies. If you are sending stuff, make sure you get a signature every single time as Paypal will find against you if there are any problems.
Other than that, cheap and cheerful and recognized by your buyers.
I'm not a fan of Google Checkout, mainly because I'm not a fan of Google in general at the moment (think about it - they control who finds your website and your online turnover - if that isn't a conflict of interest I don't know what is).
Where Paypal scores over proper merchants is that you don't need DNA to open the account. It doesn't cost to open the account (I hate set up fees), and they don't withhold your money. I got the arse many years ago with WorldPay, and dumped them for Paypal of all people.
Bad things about Paypal - they see merchants as enemies. If you are sending stuff, make sure you get a signature every single time as Paypal will find against you if there are any problems.
Other than that, cheap and cheerful and recognized by your buyers.
Our old site used World Pay apparently, so that looks like the way forward.
The developers actually mentioned the possibility of using a secure hosting site, but as I understand it this would require someone to manually pick the info off and put the payment through on a Streamline type machine? We want to automate it as highly as possible, which effectively rules that out.
How's it done on a large scale? Presumably Amazon doesn't have a little bloke in an office taking card details off the server and putting them through.
The developers actually mentioned the possibility of using a secure hosting site, but as I understand it this would require someone to manually pick the info off and put the payment through on a Streamline type machine? We want to automate it as highly as possible, which effectively rules that out.
How's it done on a large scale? Presumably Amazon doesn't have a little bloke in an office taking card details off the server and putting them through.
I'm not a big fan of WorldPay to be honest. In fact I dislike them intensely.
One big reason is that they hold back money from you for a period. I think on our old account it was 30 days, and try as we might we never got it to 14 days. (iirc thats 30+day of the week they purchase after the remittance). And we didn't even have a particularly big fraud problem either - maybe we'd get £100 a month on a turnover of £6,000.
Another issue we had with WorldPay was that if we saw a bad payment (eg someone from Indonesia) we would refund the transaction in good time (eg the day of the transaction) and 4 weeks later we would have a chargeback when the owner of the credit card spotted the transaction, despite them having a refund also. This then took time and effort to get our money released again.
And once you went through those loops, WorldPay would then charge a per bad transaction fee on top of that!
I remember having to chase something in the region of £2k from WorldPay that they refused to deal with (eg cash we'd refunded that had had a chargeback afterwards).
I can think of no worse company than WorldPay to be perfectly honest.
Another part of the company set up 2CO for our final billings before we sold the company, and they were so much easier to deal with. We more or less ran with Paypal and 2CO for the last year or so and frankly our fraud and remittance problems went away in an instant.
WorldPay will also charge you loads for set up as well - for what? It's not even a real merchant account although I'm not sure if thats changed.
I can whole hearted not recommend WorldPay.
I also wouldn't do your own internal ssl server. Way too much aggro when all the payment processors are ready to roll.
It pains me to say it, but Paypal is a very easy first step and once you have turnover up, its not that much more expensive than other processors.
When we set up StreetSafari, we used Paypal from the start. So much easier in the long run.
One big reason is that they hold back money from you for a period. I think on our old account it was 30 days, and try as we might we never got it to 14 days. (iirc thats 30+day of the week they purchase after the remittance). And we didn't even have a particularly big fraud problem either - maybe we'd get £100 a month on a turnover of £6,000.
Another issue we had with WorldPay was that if we saw a bad payment (eg someone from Indonesia) we would refund the transaction in good time (eg the day of the transaction) and 4 weeks later we would have a chargeback when the owner of the credit card spotted the transaction, despite them having a refund also. This then took time and effort to get our money released again.
And once you went through those loops, WorldPay would then charge a per bad transaction fee on top of that!
I remember having to chase something in the region of £2k from WorldPay that they refused to deal with (eg cash we'd refunded that had had a chargeback afterwards).
I can think of no worse company than WorldPay to be perfectly honest.
Another part of the company set up 2CO for our final billings before we sold the company, and they were so much easier to deal with. We more or less ran with Paypal and 2CO for the last year or so and frankly our fraud and remittance problems went away in an instant.
WorldPay will also charge you loads for set up as well - for what? It's not even a real merchant account although I'm not sure if thats changed.
I can whole hearted not recommend WorldPay.
I also wouldn't do your own internal ssl server. Way too much aggro when all the payment processors are ready to roll.
It pains me to say it, but Paypal is a very easy first step and once you have turnover up, its not that much more expensive than other processors.
When we set up StreetSafari, we used Paypal from the start. So much easier in the long run.
Chris71 said:
So what you're saying is you're not entirely in favour of World Pay?
If I can think of something positive about them, I'll come back to you.I did feel sorry for them once when they had a big denial of service against http://wcc.worldpay.com (or whatever it was called). It wasn't pointed at the https server though. They only solved the problem by turning off the http server and leaving the https server on. And at least 2 years later they never let that http server go live again.
My sorrow was short lived though.
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