Choosing a payment processor

[Guest]

My company is getting prepared to release our first product, and we've obviously come up with questions along the way. Right now, the most important issue we have is with payment processors. We were considering a hosted setup that would use PayPal or WorldPay as the payment processors, but it required that the customer leave our web page to do the actual payment.

 

I see that PayPal's Pro setup allows the customer to stay within our site throughout the entire checkout process, so I know it's possible, but our host wasn't set up to deal with that. osC has tons of features, so I assume it would allow us to do what we want. Of course, that begs the question, what payment processor should we use? I'd love to hear from some people who've actually been down this road.

[Beer Monster]

As for wanting your own page, I understand that worldpay allows you to customise their page to the look&feel of your site so the customer is essentially oblivious to the change of URL. Their rates sucked then but may have improved.

 

On my site, the transfer page informs the customer that credit cards are processed by paypal to ensure the security of their order and that we never recieve their credit card details. I think this improves consumer confidence when using the website of a small company. Of course if you're a well known (blue chip type) company then it'll have the opposite effect....worth considering anyway!!!

[wizardsandwars]

One of the problem with using a third party processor, like paypal, is that it extends an already very lengthy checkout process by two or 3 more pages. A stock checkout process using a regular paypal account is 11 pages!!

 

It's a proven fact that the longer your checkout is, the more customers you lose along the way.

[Guest]

I was looking at adding a secure payment system on our web site right now and wanted to know how difficult it is to add onto an osCommerce web site.

 

I currently have Pay Pal but many people don't have a Pay pal account so I would like to also offer a SSL.

 

Have you added one to your site and how difficult was it? Our web people maintain our site but didn't create our site and now we can't find someone who knows osCommerce. Instead they tell us osCommerce is not user friendly and that we should change to something different and of course spend a ton of money but we have no complaints about osCommerce.

 

Suggestions?

[wizardsandwars]

There are several payment modules that come with osCommerce, and even more in the contributions section.

 

Getting it working will take a small amount of technical experience, as you'll need to install a contribution or 2 to get it working the way you want. Certianly more difficult that getting paypal up and running, but if you're serious about your business, this is the road you'll eventually need to take.

[Beer Monster]

Instead they tell us osCommerce is not user friendly and that we should change to something different and of course spend a ton of money but we have no complaints about osCommerce.

 

Suggestions?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What cart do they want you to use?

 

Frankly, I think what they are telling you is BS just, as you say, to get you to pay a lot of money. Most of the commercial carts are no better than oscommerce (Actually most proprietry carts of reasonable price stink) and when it comes to adding a feature you really need, with a proprietry cart, if it's not available, you're stuffed! With oscommerce, you can for the most part get the features you want.

 

There is the problem that some of the functionality has to be added through contributions, but this can be empowering too!

 

I would recommend that you find out through searching this forum how to set up apache and mysql on your computer, copy your existing website and try developing it yourself. If it's just a payment module you want, it shouldn't be too hard.

 

As for paypal, I am aware that this is not a long term solution though and the lengthy checkout is something I'm anything but happy about!

 

Anyway, I hope I've encouraged you to join the friendly community of oscommerce developers!

 

Brian

[Guest]

What cart do they want you to use?

 

Frankly, I think what they are telling you is BS just, as you say, to get you to pay a lot of money. Most of the commercial carts are no better than oscommerce (Actually most proprietry carts of reasonable price stink) and when it comes to adding a feature you really need, with a proprietry cart, if it's not available, you're stuffed! With oscommerce, you can for the most part get the features you want.

 

There is the problem that some of the functionality has to be added through contributions, but this can be empowering too!

 

I would recommend that you find out through searching this forum how to set up apache and mysql on your computer, copy your existing website and try developing it yourself. If it's just a payment module you want, it shouldn't be too hard.

 

As for paypal, I'm getting similar rates to wizardsandwars but without the the $30 monthly fee (and i'm in ripp-off UK). I am aware that this is not a long term solution though and the lengthy checkout is something I'm anything but happy about!

 

Anyway, I hope I've encouraged you to join the friendly community of oscommerce developers!

 

Brian

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Brian,

Are you using PayPal's Payments Pro with osCommerce?

I am trying to figure out how to hook up my osCommerce site with PayPal. I am not finding hardly any documentation on the osCommerce site. On the other hand, PayPal's documentation is 112 pages long. It can't be that difficult.

 

Any ideas?

L. Jay