I would like to use Paypal, Stripe, or some other similar service to accept donations and keep track of the total amount donated so I can display it on my site. I have not found a way to do this with Paypal or Stripe unless I keep track of it myself and update every time a donation is made. Any other possibilities? If I do end up keeping track of the total amount, any recommendations for doing that with a static site hosted on vercel? Thanks.
I can't speak to Paypal or any other services, but the easiest way for Stripe will be to keep track of it yourself, as there's no API you can use to retrieve totals like that. It's likely also the easiest way no matter which service you're using.
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I offer a service 2 times a year. Some of my clients desire to make payments rather than pay in one lump sum. They need to choose the amount they desire to pay and when they (date) they want to pay on. I just need PayPal for the processing and also the tracking for the amount they have paid. It also needs to not accept any more funds once they have reached the set amount.
Has anyone heard of this capability?
You time and consideration.
Have a look at https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/products/paypal-payments-pro/
They implement payment by instalments on their end with Paypal Credit. I believe you will still receive the entire payment in one go, but the customer will have to pay it off to Paypal directly. Alternatively, you may be able to hack something with recurring payment, though you would need to cancel it once the total amount has been reached; it's definitely not meant for that.
Regardless, you are probably better off contacting paypal support for this, since this isn't really a programming specific question.
This is more of a question regarding flow than code.
I'm currently working on a booking website for a holiday home. I've implemented a booking system which currently takes full payment at the time of booking. This uses PayPal REST API. It works fine no problems code-wise.
However my client would like the system to take a deposit when booking (20%) of the total. Then take the remaining amount later on (through the site). This seems strange to me and I've never used a website which does this so I'm not sure what the flow should be.
The only way I can think of achieving this is that the user has to come to the website at some point in the future to pay the remaining amount. I could send them email reminders but it seems a bit awkward to do that.
Has anyone done anything like this in the past?
In order to take the money later, you need to store the credit card data in your system, which is not quite legal unless you are authorized payment service provider (and I'm almost sure you're not).
We have the same case in our reservation system. Generally, you'd allow credit card payment only for deposit, and later final amount is paid via bank transfer or cash, for example, and has to be settled manually by an operator.
Your idea is not bad, however. You could inform the user about the final amount and due date in the booking confirmation email and later on send them reminders.
You can utilize reference transactions to handle this without storing/saving any billing information on your server.
Reference transactions can be used in Express Checkout as well as with Payments Pro.
Basically, the way it'll work is that you can process the original 20% and then you'll save that transaction ID in your database. Once you're ready to process the remaining amount you just make a call to DoReferenceTransaction and supply the original transaction ID along with the new amount to charge. PayPal will then charge this new amount using the billing information that they have saved on their server.
I'm going to offer my customers a selection of subscriptions to digital content. I want the customer to be able to add or delete subscriptions later, with as little hassle as possible.
It seems that if I use Paypal vault, I can collect the card information on the same subscriptions screen without multiple redirects and later change the monthly total without another checkout process or even customer sending approval to Paypal!
Does Paypal allow this? It seems too easy and also too permissive. Also, do I need to worry about PCI compliance?
Does anyone know a better way to do this (with or without Paypal)? I don't know how to use paypal recurring payments without a lengthy checkout if they ever change their subscriptions. Google wallet does not have subscription cancellation in their API! Several other alternatives only allow preset subscription amounts.
The CSC/CVV is missing from the examples here: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/store-a-credit-card/ which makes me think you cannot use the card at will. The customer is probably going to be asked for authorisation.
Normally your online payment provider needs to support recurring payments (installments, subscriptions). PayPal does, there's a specific API:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/installment_buttons/
For the customer it's one-off, then the card is billed, say, monthly.
Is paypal a suitable system for handling event ticket payments. All I want to do is create a page with event details, a list of hOw many tickets are left and a secure payment handling. Systems like eventwax seem to charge for use of there system and then paypal charges you too. I just dont get why people are paying twice. Also does anyone have any other recommendations for similar sites like eventwax
Google Checkout lets you do something that will work for you. Basically you create a Google Docs spreadsheet that follows a special format and contains the items that you sell and the quantities remaining. Then, you can make an HTML button that you can embed in your page. When a user clicks the button, it processes the selling of a specific item from that spreadsheet. Google handles everything else automatically - it subtracts one from the quantity field in the spreadsheet, processes the payment and sends you an email with the purchase and shipping details. Little to no programming required.
Of course, this can't work with PayPal.
First off, paypal comes in many different flavors. From the simple they host the order form and process payments way on up to all you do is pass them the credit card info and charge amount and they process it.
With that in mind I don't believe they support selling a limited quantity of items. This is something you would have to provide with your site.
Which leaves us with: are you asking a "how do I code this" type of question or something more general. If the former then please provide language and what you have so far. If the latter, then you might try at http://webmasters.stackexchange.com
Now regarding eventwax charging for usage, that is a perfectly legit thing to do. They are providing a service which allows people to sell a limited number of things, ensure that those things aren't over sold (which can be difficult depending on your db transactional experience), and handle payment processing.
All said and done there are really several companies which will get a piece of the action so to speak. Paypal is one, the credit card companies are another. If you are using paypal's payflow pro gateway then there is at least two other companies involved: your bank and the transaction processor themselves.
Which leads us to why people pay companies like event wax. Quite frankly, it's easy they don't have to screw around with programming something, and it works right now. There's a lot that can be said about doing things this way. Usually you just include all of this into the cost of doing business.
I'm trying to integrate a payment mechanism to my site. The scenario that I need is not trivial and can be explained by the following example:
User pays upfront for a subscription program (i.e. receiving Netflix). User is able to make changes to the subscription (i.e. change number of movies checked out each time from 4 to 2)
User is able to buy additional one time purchases via the provider's site (Netflix) supplied by 3rd parties. These items (i.e. popcorn, snacks) get billed to the same credit card as the subscription without having to go through the process of resubmitting the credit card information.
Of course, my site takes also a small fee for the transactions :-)
I was wondering if this is supported by PayPal, Google Checkout or someone else.
Thanks.
The Paypal api can handle all of those processes.
I seem to have dropped the ball on what kind of answer you wanted so I'll leave it at that.
If you have some feedback, more direct questions I will try to answer as much as I can
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The money would best go through you first, unless somehow you can convince your customers its normal to bill them per item. Also if they pay by credit card you should only bill them once as you would incur fees on every payment. I don't know of anyway to bill once but distribute the payments.
As for the paypal docs..
Very good resource, there is also some sample code for most major web languages
Also this will get you started if you don't have a developer login
Their developer support is also pretty good. One thing a lot of people seem to screw up when starting out with the paypal api is not setting the latest version in the configs so don't forget to update that to the latest release. :)
Disclaimer..
Yea I know there is a lot of bad press about paypal and crazy stuff happening, but they do get the job done most of the time, its not my fault the customers love to use it.