Can someone help a newbie

[Flashster]

I'm a newbie to online store/credit card payments online, but I am a .net programmer.

I just have a rather embarrassingly basic question.

If you are using a third party that handles your credit card payments, how does it work?
i.e. when the customer is typing their credit card details in, is that page on your site, or the credit card handler?
If its on your site, does that mean you are actually storing credit card details on your site, or just forwarding them?

Also, I have been looking at some demo's of shopping cart software, and some have an admin section that shows recent orders. Some list many of the orders as 'pending' or 'paid'. I don't understand why it should be 'pending' surely the credit card company would do the credit card payment instantly wouldn't it? So a completed order should always be 'paid'..?

Clearly I'm getting some assumptions wrong here, but having not implemented an online store yet I need some basic answers.

Be grateful for some quick answers.

[slick_uk]

If you're using a system such as nochex.com, which doesn't require a gateway (psp), then various bits of information on pushing checkout (such as the value of your shopping cart, your email address) is passed to Nochex.

Nochex process the card details on their website. The card info is never passed to you. On the customer completing the credit card info, the customer is returned to your website and the money, (minus the transaction fee) is deposited in your Nochex account. You'll get a payment notification and your shopping cart should send you the order. You can then withdrawwto any nominated (UK) bank account. The above is similar for worldpay and paypal tho there will be some differences.

[FalseDawn]

i.e. when the customer is typing their credit card details in, is that page on your site, or the credit card handler?

Your site.
[edit] - if you are referring to paypal, nochex etc, then the details will be entered on _their_ secure pages.
I thought you were referring to how it is accomplished with a payment gateway and merchant acccount.. [/edit]

If its on your site, does that mean you are actually storing credit card details on your site, or just forwarding them?

You will accept the information via an encryped page (a POST request normally), then forward to the payment gateway for processing. There should never be a need to store financial info anywhere.

I don't understand why it should be 'pending' surely the credit card company would do the credit card payment instantly wouldn't it?

No, the conventional methology is to "authorize" the payment first (via the gateway), then check details manually if required, then ship, then "capture" the payment, either manually or in a batch.
"Authorized" will probably correspond to "pending", and "captured" to "paid", depending on the specifics of the cart implementation.

I believe that the rules of visa, mastercard etc. specifically specify that is against their terms & conditions to charge a credit card before the goods have shipped (if you are selling tangibles).

[edited by: FalseDawn at 10:25 pm (utc) on July 31, 2006]

[FalseDawn]

If you are using a third party that handles your credit card payments, how does it work?

If you are considering using Paypal etc to handle CC payments, I would strongly advise you to do it properly from the beginning and set up a proper merchant account and payment gateway.

[edited by: FalseDawn at 10:21 pm (utc) on July 31, 2006]

[Flashster]

FalseDawn,

I'm a bit confused. Probably becuase I don't know enough to make my question very clear. Here goes....

I want to make the payment part of a web site look like its totally part of the web site and not part of any other site. I can use a secure certificate on the credit card input form.

I want to accept payment by Visa, MasterCard, etc (and possibly paypal, but not essential).

Can you set up some sort of authorisation provider (by adding a dll file or certain code to my web site, for instance) which enables me POST my customers credit card form contents to securly to them (without me ever having to store them locally) and then receive some sort of signal that its OK or NOT OK. From that point, from what you are saying, I would ship the item, then log into my authorisation provider and process the payment?

I assume then I would need to set up a merchant bank account to accept the online credit card payments. They, and the authorisation provider I assume take a slice of each transaction cost.

If thats about right, which authorisation companies should I be considering for use in the UK?

If I'm not right, please put me straight!

[slick_uk]

have a look at Electronic Payments (uk) - has a lot of useful info on it

[edited by: lorax at 11:59 am (utc) on Aug. 1, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] removed url [/edit] [/edit][/1]

[Flashster]

Thanks, but that only helps with how the payment process works regarding the banks. It did help there but....

I really need a 'web developers' description of how it works if I am developing my own shopping cart.

[vite_rts]

You really should visit all the websites of the online service providers,

They all provide full instructions, in pdf format. I have implemented PAYPAL, but I can tell you that this is one off the
most critical aspects of a money making site, and it is complex

So go download some pdfs an spend a few weeks reading them,

The relationship between PAYPAL, Worldpay etc etc and the actual credit card companies such as visa and mastercard must be understood
and all this really requires considerable study on your part

[Flashster]

Thanks,

Unfortunately I haven't a few weeks.

I need a recommendation for a gateway that will accept credit card payments in the UK, and that I can use 'invisibly' with my cart.

If someone can recommend one in the UK then I'll go there and read up on it?

Thanks

[vite_rts]

have you considered using an ecommerce package?

Some hosting companys I think offer them together with inbuilt shopping carts.

I dunno how expert you are with .net, but it is not a small thing to correctly code an integrate a shopping cart with a third parties API not even where you're using sample code from the third party

There are a number off ecommerce packages with inbuilt cart & card payment services already integrated,,,,

Do a search on google , msn yahoo

If you mean you've designed a website for a client and need to add payment facilities and therefore cannot use a prebuilt ecommerce package,,,,,

Good luck

[FalseDawn]

Flashster,
Yes, you are basically correct in your assumptions of how it all works.

However, when you say:

I really need a 'web developers' description of how it works if I am developing my own shopping cart.

The best thing to do in this case (as has been said), is either to get a pre-rolled shopping cart, or if you are determined to do it yourself, maybe look at the code within an open-source shopping cart to get an idea of how it is done - use this along with any documentation from the payment gateway to give you a starting point for your code.

As far as UK gateways go, I can't help as I'm in the US, and I know it's generally a lot harder to get set up in the UK.

[Flashster]

OK - you've convinced me to use an off-the-shelf e-commerce package.

So, can anyone recommend a .net based shopping cart solution thats UK payment gateway friendly?

Thanks

[slick_uk]

take a look at roman cart or mals e-commerce, I'd assume both work, mals is free so worth a trial, then sign up for a free paypal or nochex seller account to test out the payments, both can be upgraded to merchant versions quite easily if you decide to go with them

[Flashster]

I will take a look.

Anyone used DotNetDuke as a store solution?

The latest version has a store module built in and its all free?

[elgumbo]

Can't help you with the technical aspects but on a personal note, I hate it when I site I don't know asks for my card details. I much prefer it if they process the order and then send me to a worldpay, secpay or protx screen to enter the card number.

I just don't feel safe not knowing what the site owner is "doing" with my card number.

BTW, secpay and protx are both well worth a look as UK payment gateways whichever method you choose.

[slick_uk]

flashter, does the company you're doing this site for already have a bank merchant account, a trading history or potential to do well, if so, then you'll be best going down the merch. acc & gateway route

if not, then you'll need to look at worldpay, paypal or Nochex. (or 2CO but they don't offer uk debit cards)

[The_Erb]

Hi Flashter

I've worked with a few clients in your situation.

Eventually you need to have a Merchant Account with your bank and set up a PROTX gateway or similar.

The banks will normally need to see six months trading to give you a Merchant Account (UK) so, in the vernacular, you're bu....ed.

Most of my clients open a PayPal account for the first six months, establish a trading base and then apply for a merchant account.

You can modify the look of the PayPal payment pages to look like those on your site - although buyers will be purchasing off your site. When you sign up to Protx, or similar, the payment is integrated into your site.

Hope this helps

[Flashster]

Thanks - its does help a lot.

In this case I think they have been using paypal. I would imagine they have traded for at least 6 months.

So I am assuming from what your replies are saying, that the following don't need a seperate merchant bank account set up:
worldpay, paypal or Nochex.

This lot also are not integrated 'gateways' as such - i.e. customers are sent to their site to input their credit card details.

[What about Paypal Pro - whats the difference to normal PayPal? Is this available in the UK?]

I assume gateways such as Protx are ones which allow a customer to type in their credit card details on your site, then deal with the authorisation behind the scenes.

When a seller wants to actually process the credit card sale (with something like Worldpay or Paypal) following shipment, do they have to log into WorldPay/PayPal directly to process the payment, or is there a way to do this from within their shop site?

One quesiton I have about these options too - how do you collect your customers information (i.e. address details)? As these details are collected on the PayPal/Wordpay pages, how do you get hold of them?

Thanks so much for the help so far.

JJ

[edited by: Flashster at 10:42 am (utc) on Aug. 3, 2006]

[slick_uk]

shipping details are captured in your shopping cart, when the transaction completes, the payment processor will let the shopping cart know that it's all processed and you should get an email from your payment processor and your shopping cart to show the transaction's gone through.

why not try it out with mals and paypal/nochex for free?