We currently use the Website Payments Pro recurring billing solution from Paypal for a SaaS web application (user signs up for a monthly billing subscription to our service) but are becoming increasingly concerned that all of our credit card data is 'locked in' to Paypal and we can never get access to it.
The ideal for us is at the point of signup to store a users credit card details in a third party system (vault) whilst processing the transaction through Paypal's Website Payments Pro billing solution. This would give us the freedom to change our payment processor without having to ask everyone of our users to re-enter their card details - storing payment details in a third party PCI compliant system would allow us to do this.
Does anyone know of any such solutions that would allow us to store credit card details without transacting against them and whether these would be available to UK based companies ?
Thanks - appreciate any help you can give.
Mike
PayPal now offers such a service
https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/api/#vault
I found that Briantree.com offers that service
I'm not aware of anything that does this (but would love to hear otherwise). The reason it doesn't exist I would assume is because 'my' PCI-DSS requires that any third party that I pass card details to is also PCI compliant.
Therefore, this 'vault' provider would only be able to return to you a full card number if you were fully PCI compliant (and if you were, then why would you need to use a 3rd party vault?!)
So the best you could optimistically hope for is a 3rd party that both vaults the details and also allows interaction with 'n' other payment gateways, but this would obviously only allow you to switch between gateways that the vault supports. Given that the 'vault' would need to generate income, as well as the gateways that it communicates with, I can't see this being cheaper than choosing and interacting with a single gateway directly.
Related
I am a college student and I want to launch an online store for dropshipping. I am allowed to have one credit card, where I live, say Mastercard. But for the customers convenience I would like to enable VISA, Discover, Mastercard, American express, Debit card, and PayPal checkout. I know that there is a PayPal credit card that allows payments from all these cards but it requires a business license, which I am not allowed to have as a student. Is there a way I can receive payments from the above mentioned cards to a Mastercard? If there is a better solution to my problem I would like to hear it from you. Thanks!
When you set up an online store, you will also be signing up with a Payment gateway that will be collecting money on your behalf and transferring it to you. In this way, you will be able to set up your store to be able to accept any payment methods supported by the payment gateway(s) that you set up, and any money you make will be transferred from the gateway to the account that you registered with. This might be a credit card or directly to a bank account depending on what the gateway supports.
Using a trusted payment gateway (such as Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, Authorize.net, etc.) will let you focus on your store and not have to worry about accepting credit card information directly, and you will get your earnings transferred to you regularly in a form that you can accept. Note also that taking credit card info directly comes with a host of security concerns and regulations. By using a payment gateway you will never see anyone's credit card info directly, so you won't have to worry about all the security and legal concerns surrounding that. The gateway companies make their money by taking a small transaction fee for each purchase, but this fee is definitely worth it to get your business started.
as the questions implies, I am in the process of deciding on a payment gateway solution for an online financial service. The gateway should allow customers to pay using prepaid cards without providing a phone number, address, legal name, etc. Ideally the gateway will also allow instantaneous access to cleared payments, but this feature is less important. Will PayPal meet either of these requirements when using the REST API and the direct payment system? I was unable to find a concrete answer in the documentation. If not, are there any competing payment processors which offer support for charging prepaid cards without identify verification? Thanks in advance.
As of now, no U.S based payment processors allow processing prepaid cards without some form of identifying information about the customer, and PayPal is no exception. However, a representative from PayPal mentioned that a feature allowing anonymous payment has been requested by many merchants and is in development.
I need to create a subscriptions system in my app, where users can subscribe to a certain package and they must be billed monthly.
Moreover, I need to charge their credit card automatically, and without requiring them to have a PayPal account.
I read about https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant/erp_overview, but is seems it's not available anymore as I click on sign up and it gives me an error ("Sorry, this feature is not available at this time.").
Then I've read about PayPal Standard Payments, which have a subscription method (https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/subscribe_buttons/)
From what I can read there is that this is what is suitable for my use case, and it says that I need to enable the above mentioned service, which it doesn't work.
Can someone point me in the right direction on what service should I use from PayPal in order to implement recurring payments (basically my users will subscribe themselves to a service on my website, and I need to charge them monthly).
Thank you.
If you're wanting to handle credit cards directly I would highly recommend going with Payments Pro w/ Recurring Payments APIs.
You'll have to pay a monthly fee to get it all activated, and it's a little bit more expensive than what you were looking at, but it will give you much greater flexibility building your application(s) into various experiences for your buyers.
I understand there are a number of account aggregators out there which allow businesses to get access to customers's transaction data (Plaid, Yodlee, Intuit Customer Account API, open to others...). I'd like to know which ones DO or DON'T also allow for:
Determining the DUE-DATE of a customer's credit card balance.
Making PAYMENTS across accounts and parties.
Response from Yodlee
1) Determining the DUE-DATE of a customer's credit card balance
Yes , Yodlee do provide credit card bill due-date though their API.
2) Making PAYMENTS across accounts and parties.
Yodlee does have a Bill-Pay product but it's not available to API customers as of today.
I've been working with a loan repayment API and ran into this issue as well with Plaid. For US banks only, it seems that there are three items you need for this system:
The bill due date (and amount) for the credit card
The banking information. At a minimum, a user's routing and account number (which Plaid can provide) and the credit card's banking information (their routing and account number for direct payments).
An ACH processor or US bank that will let you upload a NACHA file. This is the step that actually moves the money from one account to the other. Expect lots of compliance paperwork from the partner that you use.
It's a complicated world when you try to pay on behalf of a user. Outside of programming, get a good lawyer who knows bank law!
Response from Plaid (as of 9/22/2014): No/Not yet and No
"1) Within a customer's credit information, does Plaid provide their credit card bill due-date? what would be the appropriate call for that?
Currently no, but it's something we may add in the future.
2) Does Plaid offer anything by way of making payments or money transfers across accounts? (I'm assuming 'no,' but just want to confirm)
We do not, however we can help with the authorization of accounts for ACH & Wire transfers. Feel free to reach out directly for more information."
Which payment gateway should I choose from among Authorize.net, PayPal & Google Checkout?
Is there anything wrong if I provide all ? I'm planning for express checkout methods in all the three services, the direct credit card accepting service.
The more choices you offer, the more choices your customers have, so no, there is nothing wrong with offering all three.
If you potentially have customers from the EU or Asia, you may want to investigate options that are popular in those regions as well.
Keep in mind, PayPal tends to freeze money in account for some reason and have huge problems even answering email with 24 hours.
Paypal is of course the most well known and respected, however the answer actually depends on the amount of revenue your company will make (monthly and yearly averages), the average price per transaction and the number of debit card vs credit card payments you are likly to take. Without these figures it's nigh on impssible to determine which one is cheapest for you.
Authorize.Net is only a payment gateway, not a payment processor. You need to have a US based merchant account to use with Authorize.Net.
Paypal and Google Checkout are third party payment processors. They essentially are the payment gateway and merchant account rolled into one package.
It's worth noting, from the research I've done, using PayPal is cheaper than credit card processing directly. They charge less of a fee (I'm assuming because they process everything themselves, and don't go through some third party to get to the credit card company).