Is there ability to get in some way Balance on CreditCard ?
API of Authorize.net or Paypal were examined on this subject and no results.
In real life any cash terminal can show to you balance on your credit card. That is why I assume there is some way to get this balance in web through some payment gateway.
Thanks in advance for answers!
I've dealt with many credit card processing APIs and unless it is an API for a gateway solution, they generally do not have methods to do much in the way of querying for information. You might see some capability (again, in a gateway API but not in a lower-level processor's API) to load details of the original transaction, but not much else.
This makes sense in terms of supporting high volume transactions. I visited FDMS once and talked to them a bit about their architecture. To maintain a > 1k TPS processing capability, they can't even wait for database writes when you're authorizing. That authorization code you get back is assigned from a pre-determined pool. The data about the transaction is pushed off to another process for persisting to a large back end system for later settlement. This is why many of the non-gateways have rules about waiting x minutes before trying to settle; the data isn't in the settlement system for a bit after authorization. This is also the reason why the authorization code expires after a while - they re-use it. (Someone got the bright idea that they'd charge you extra for letting the auth code expire.....probably due to the increased load of data they need to store in the settlement system waiting for these things to time out.)
Checking a credit balance is also not part of a normal credit card processing workflow. Mostly you attempt to authorize and get one of 3 results: a hard decline, a soft decline, or an authorization. A balance check isn't really needed, and would probably open up some privacy or security issues if it were available.
Cash cards (like pre-loaded Visas) use a different administrative activiation and management API. Gift cards work the same way, and you can use that administrative API to get balances. This is a special case because these technically aren't credit cards.
I've not dealt much with the back end settlement networks that the issuing banks and the acquiring banks use to transfer data during settlement. To get this kind of info, you'd have to have access to this network. You might want to check the "any cash terminal will give you a balance" statement a bit. It would make sense that you could get your balance from an issuing bank's ATM, but try to do it on one of those third-party type machines you find in gas stations that is not from your issuing bank to see if it works. If you use a true credit card (not a debit card - that is a different network entirely), I don't know that it will show you your balance.
The only thing that I can think of is to use the AuthOnly method and try running (and voiding) multiple transactions, incrementing the PaymentAmount values until it fails.
Is there ability to get in some way Balance on CreditCard ?
No.
API of Authorize.net or Paypal were examined on this subject and no results.
That's because you can't get someone else's balance. It's private information.
In real life any cash terminal can show to you balance on your credit card. That is why I assume there is some way to get this balance in web through some payment gateway.
Emphasis on the 'show to you' part because you own the card. And the only allowed parties involved is the cardholder (with card in hand and pin) and the issuing bank and/or card company. Even over the phone there are security checks (Date of birth, zip/postal code, etc)
You will (should) never be able to get, through an API, gateway solution, or otherwise, the card holders balance unless you are affiliated with the issuing credit card and have been requested by the card holder after security checks.
This would be a gaping security and privacy hole. Think of all the professional credit card theifs being able to pull the balance amounts on thousands of credit cards in order to help know which cards and how much of an amount to charge, transfer and extort.
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I am starting a business and I would like to offer Paypal as a payment option, but for my business it is essential to be able to block an amount of money, just like a car rental or a hotel does on a credit card. Would it be possible to block an amount from my users PayPal account and release it or book it for good later?
My business is of course an online service, and I want to do this pragmatically in a Spring based application.
I think what you are looking for is Authorization and capture.
I haven't used that feature from Paypal, but have used it elsewhere. What you are looking for is usually called card authorization, preauthorization, or preauth.
Yes it's possible
PayPal's REST API offer 3 primary ways to ensure you paid for product/services that you give to your customers
sale. Makes an immediate payment so you get paid immediately
authorize. Authorizes a payment for capture later.(this is what you see in a car rental or hotel)
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payments/authorize-and-capture-payments/
order. Creates an order. - which gives you the flexibility to
multiple to do multiple authorizations and captures (these are for
complex use cases such as when you buy a computer from Dell you would
be authorized for the desktop, monitor, keyboard at different points
of time based on availability and then the funds captured when they
are shipped)
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 looking for a payment provider (or any other method) of taking payments with credit card details. Then immediately transfer the money to one of possibly hundreds of bank accounts (This has to be based on bank account number and sort code).
Does anyone know of a provider or other way of doing this?
This sounds like you want to integrate two technologies, a credit card processing service for bringing money in and then an ACH API for sending money out.
You can either look for two discreet services for doing this such as WePay and BancBox (cc and ACH respectively) or look at integrated services that provide both technologies such as Balanced (whom I work with).
Then depending on if you're taking the payments in directly on your site or not, you should be able to map from a card to a bank account and shoot the money out to the correct bank account via the ACH API once you've received the funds.
One thing to consider is that there is a 30 day window for disputes on credit cards, called a chargeback, and you could be liable for this and caught short if you've already sent the money on its way to the recipient.
I have a VoIP calling company for a Russian market with a Russian website where people can sign up for an account, buy credit and make calls. My service is not even popular and I have only ~100 customers. Recently, I had around 10 fraudulent users who used stolen credit/debit card or PayPal accounts to make payments. Even though my website is in Russian, I had fraudulent customers from Somalia who purchased $50 worth of credit with stolen information. Two days later after fraudulent user signed up & used up their credit, I received email from PayPal saying that those transactions were "unauthorized (transactions)." PayPal gave me 10 days to resolve this dispute and make refunds by talking to people whose financial information was compromised. After hours of arguing and debate, I had to make refund and accept the loss. But, is this how it works? What if I had 100 fraudulent customers who purchased $1000.00 worth of credit? How can I insure myself against this? Note that my service was in Russian, what if I had English website for everyone to sign up? How do you protect your service against such things?
Some of the measures I can think of are:
Customer must activate their account via verification email (Already implemented)
Accounts are by default aren't activated, I have to manually
activate them (Customers may not like this)
Calling the new customer at provided phone # to make sure if he
really signed up (I hate this one)
All of your advises and opinions are appreciated!
I worked at a similar company (no names) and the only thing we could do that actually solved the problem was to have the users sign up with a credit card, billing the minimum amount from their card while generating a code that was included in their statement (a'la "VoipMaster (4711)")
They then had to look up their credit card bill (many banks let you do it pretty much immediately online) and enter that code at our site. In other words, the user had to have access to the credit card bill to sign up, not just the credit card information.
I think that pretty much stopped fraud cold, but it's hard without marketing research to tell how many valid users didn't sign up because of it.
Its just the pitfall of accepting online payments. You do not lose $1000 worth of money when you have to refund though. Paypal should not charge you any fee's for reversing the money and therefore you have not lost anything apart from a small amount of time.
There are some things you could do to try and prevent this happening in the first place. The biggest thing would be to chose one or more vectors and then detect any changes on those vectors. A change would then need to have a secondary authorisation.
For example you could say that if you try and use a different paypal account to the last one you used, then you must go through confirmation stage.
Another one could be that if you purchase more than a certain limit then you go through the confirmation stage.
If your IP address changes you go through the confirmation stage (not so good, but its an idea nonetheless).
The confirmation process/stage could be anything you deem suitable to ensure to the best of your ability that they are legitimate. For example you may require email confirmation from them or require them to wait 24 hours for the credit to be given (provide a phone number they can call you on to fast track maybe).
Theres no sure fire way, but the harder you make it the less it will happen. Theres hundreds of things you could do based on the simple theory i posted above. Nevermind more complex things you could possible use. At $50 a time i would assume they are using your site as a test site to ensure the details all work ok, before going on to using them for larger payments elsewhere or transferring money to there own accounts. So if you make it harder for them to do that,, they will find somewhere else to test them.
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.