Forum Moderators: buckworks
The success of the site will rely on returning customers. For customers who do not have a Paypal account and who therefore pay by credit/debit card, is there a way of retaining their details so that they don't have to fill out their name, address etc every time?
If Paypal is not suitable for this, are there any recommendations?
is there a way of retaining their details so that they don't have to fill out their name, address etc every time?
Yes. What you do is you have them fill out the info on your site, but do not include payment info. Set a cookie when you do this, see below.
When this form is submitted, you generate a unique ID, store the information they submitted in a database, then pass these values over to payPal. If you follow the documentation and use payPal's variable names, first name, last name, address, etc. are all pre-filled when they hit payPal.
When the transaction completes - doesn't matter if it's immediate or in the case of an e-Check, days later - payPal notifies your website via IPN (Instant Payment Notification.) On receipt of the IPN, your website updates the database, sends emails, makes a downloadable available, whatever.
When the customer returns to the web site, the cookie identifies the customer, gets thier info from the DB, and pre-populates the form fields. This is not a secure method, so make sure it's not critical information. For a more secure method, use "returning customers log in" (but this is a bad idea on several points.)
Look into the IPN documentation, PHP, Perl, ASP are all supported. You need to use specific variables during the transaction and a script in place that "listens" for the IPN's.
