By mwu on
I'm looking into various options for doing recurring billing via credit card.
I've offered $100 bounty or donation for a 4.7 authorize.net SIM module, and $100 to finish the 4.7 paypal pro module.
I'm also looking at non-Drupal options.
zencart does not do recurrent billing
paypal standard does recurrent billing, but does not accept credit cards, and is not ready in 4.7. paypal pro accepts credit cards, but does not do recurrent billing, and is not ready in 4.7
amember's payment systems for recurrent billing mostly store the credit card info, which I don't want to do.
there is a hosted product called www.subscriptionproducts.com which is $90 a month.
I was wondering what people are using for recurrent billing by credit card.
Comments
interesting thread... I
interesting thread...
I spent the whole weekend researching a similar topic, but even after looking at 10+ different invoicing + merchant / billing systems I have to solution for this problem...
BTW: $90 monthyl charge is quite a lot for recurring charging service... eh?
--- http://www.cemper.com
--- http://weblog.cemper.com
--- http://www.marketingfan.com
recurrent billing
the ecommerce module sort of handles recurring charges. You can set up an item to have an ongoing monthly (or quartlerly or annual or weekly or whatever) charge. Before the end of each period, ecommerce will send an email to the customer, who can then click a link to process the charge for the period (using whichever of the enabled payment modules they choose).
It would be nice if you could automatically process a payment each period without end-user interaction (much like PayPal subscriptions), but that is apparently not possible with ecommerce.
--Brian
--
We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
from "Ode" by Arthur O'Shaugnessy
Yes, that is a problem
I too have looked into it and the answer is to write your own debit script from scratch.. If that is not a suitable solution, I'm waiting for the ecommerce paypal module for 4.7.. or you can go with 4.6 now. The ecommerce module does not function as I'd like, as brianlc pointed out... but we don't always get what we want, especially when we have small sites and limited budgets.
How I'd like it to function:
1) Integrated into the registration process so you cannot access the content until payment is processed and this is done immediate and automatically.
2) You are assigned a role when paid, if not paid, the role is demoted(access to content thus restricted) but the account is still accesible.
3) The subscription keeps billing them as its supposed to without any human interaction until they terminate their account.
What annoys me is that I could write it myself.. but it would not be in PHP and would not interact with Drupals other modules, i.e. the store etc.. and thus, would not ever be quite right. So.. we just have to deal with it.
But that's just me. Sorry if this was not much help.
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"You can always find the storm by listening for the Thunder."
SubscriptionProducts.com Follow-Up Info
Hello!
I am hoping I can be of assistance in this conversation. The presence of this thread was just brought to our attention, so I hope we're not too late to jump and and help.
Brian posted, "...It would be nice if you could automatically process a payment each period without end-user interaction (much like PayPal subscriptions), but that is apparently not possible with ecommerce..."
Actually, there are solutions that will do that. Some are built-in to the payment gateway, and others are built-in to the shopping cart software.
For example, the Authorize.net (www.authorize.net) payment gateway has an option to set up automatic recurring billing -- but there is usually an additional charge for this service.
The SubscriptionProducts.com shopping cart will also allow automated processing of payments without end-user interaction. The shopping cart generates a calendar of "scheduled orders" for each customer. As each customer's next order becomes due, the shopping cart automatically processes it just like a regular shopping cart order and then schedules their next order on the calendar. That way, the customer doesn't need to manually interact with the transaction, and the payment gateway doesn't need to track the recurring billing.
The question was posted, "...BTW: $90 monthly charge is quite a lot for recurring charging service... eh?..."
That's a good question too! To clarify, the monthly charge includes the shopping cart software, the recurring billing (and other) add-on features, website hosting a dedicated SSL security certificate, and phone tech support. Whether this is a bargain or a rip off is up to you to decide. :) It depends on what you're looking for.
No single software or service solution is the right fit for everybody. I hope this information is helpful. Let us know if there's any other questions we can help with!
Chuck Marier
SubscriptionProducts.com Development Team
Let us know how we can help you!
subscriptionproducts.com = Modular Merchant
When I visit http://www.subscriptionproducts.com and from there click on "Pricing & Signup", it takes me to http://www.modularmerchant.com/shopping-cart-sign-up.php. I see the company's name is Modular Merchant.
I called Modular Merchant's toll free phone number, (888) 288-9910, to find out why the price increased from $90/month, as originally posted back in September, to the current $120/month. Sherry (the very helpful customer service person) explained that they used to offer the shopping cart at $90/month and, in addition, also offered various other modules for additional prices (affililate, etc.), which tended to confuse customers. Now, they offer everything for a simple $120/month which makes sense and makes things more streamlined and straightforward.
However, I can't afford $120 x 12 months = $1,440/year on an ongoing basis. It's simply too high a cost, particularly since most Drupal users are in the open source community to, among other things, avoid some of the ongoing costs in the first place!
So, I'm still looking for an affordable solution to my need for recurring billing via a credit card. I need a an open-source shopping cart or a Drupal module that will allow automated processing of credit card payments without end-user interaction, and to do so preferably on someone else's server such as PayPal's as I prefer to NOT store credit card numbers.
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Recurring Billing in Authorize.net
If signed up for recurring billing in Authorize.net, does the eCommerce module send a recurring billing indicator when it processes the transaction. I can't find any reference that it does but wanted to confirm.
Thanks, Bruce...
let's work together
Thanks everyone.
Summary of current state
Drupal has no automatic recurring payment capabilities except via paypal standard, which does not accept credit cards.
I expect 95% of my users will not have paypal accounts and would be deterred from buying a subscription if I do not take credit cards. so right now, my operating assumption is that accepting credit cards is a must.
My understanding is that there is nothing in the works to accept recurring credit card payments.
mcafee
I didn't know this but mcafee provides security analyses of sites.
http://www.siteadvisor.com
merchantamerica.com.
$99 set up. $20/mo
If recurring, you get credit card info (say via fax) and key it in.
If customers enters info via internet, no recurring.
get this.
thinksubscription.com
$1500 montly
$7500 setup
yeah, rite!
I'd write it myself before paying that much what a rip off...
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"You can always find the storm by listening for the Thunder."
Recurring payment
I have software for recurring payments of checks and credit cards...it also does ARC, PPD, CCD and POP...if a check ach is returned, it also has an RCK function for resubmission of returned items. Credit Cards can be a single transaction or recurring...it is awesome software that i will gladly share with anyone interested in using it. With remote capture and deposit becoming mainstream, I couldn't have fould better software...go to www.checkassist.com or contact me directly at browland@checkassist.com ...I am ready to take your bounty! Email me for a demo today...
How would your checkassist
How would your checkassist software integrate into drupal + ecommerce module?
One important info that I
One important info that I think I missed to far
amember's payment systems supports recurring via PayPal Subscriptions.
and of course you can get your clients signup to a PayPal Subscriptions only by CreditCard.
My open questions are:
- will the amember plugin UPGRADE my drupal users - i.e. give them a new user role?
- will the signup process be transparent, so I can use the drupal signup process for paying users that are NOT yet my users?
christoph
bought amember, still think about switching to drupal ecommerce
I meanwhile bought amember and do a lot of customizing with the company, which is VERY helpful...
my answers
- will the amember plugin UPGRADE my drupal users - i.e. give them a new user role?
YES: you can assign a different role per product
- will the signup process be transparent, so I can use the drupal signup process for paying users that are NOT yet my users?
Well, the concept is to signup in amember and then just create Drupal users and roles... this is currently done via MYSQL inserts
which is a dirty workaround to not use the user.module
Also I want my users signup in the drupal level, filling out my profiles and all that stuff - that's not supported by amember
That's the reason why I currenlty consider either a) investing even more time to customize aMember which is a great product, but doesn't know much about drupal or b) start from scratch with the ecommerce / worldpay module
(see http://drupal.org/node/91211 for my requirements/concepts)
christoph
Have you dropped aMember since your post in October?
Could you please elaborate on why the mySQL inserts results in a dirty workaround? What's the advantage of using the user.module? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
So even after a new member has signed up via aMember, he or she can't go back and fill out the profile? The profile is one of the key things I'd like my users to fill out, so if aMember does not allow that, it's definitely a limitation.
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
amember user insert
I found that users were inserted via a simple insert-statement that didn't even take care of the sequence numbers...
so every manually created user later corrupted the user base... pretty dirty solution... while I got the source I didn't implement a better one yet, and they didn't either - I'm not using amember currently due to that
Sign up all users through aMember
Yes, manually created users will corrupt the user base if previous members have signed up through aMember. To get around this, you need to register all your members through aMember. This way you can convert them to paying members at a later date as well.
www.awdd.ca
lm paypal
lm paypal modules.
@gener: you mean the LM
@gener: you mean the LM PayPal module should be used for recurring CC charges??? PayPal doesn't do that without PayPal account, doesn't allow pro-rating,etc etc
LM_PayPal: Recurring Debits?
Does anyone know if lm_paypal_subscriptions support recurring debits via CC? If not, can it be configured to?
Ask here...
deville,
Your LM_PayPal recurring debits via credit card question stands a better chance of being answered here.
Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA
President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
CANNOT
it CANNOT support it, as PAYPAL does not support it
Hmmm...where did you get your info?
Hi Christoph,
PayPal does not support recurring debits via credit card? Maybe I'm confused on the meaning of debit vs. credit, so could you please elaborate a bit? In your response, please copy & paste the PayPal verbiage as well as providing a link to where you found it.
I'm confused with your comment because at this PayPal page, it states:
There's more info at the link above, but from the quote, they do provide credit card recurring payments. Did you mean to say that this isn't available for NON-Business and NON-Premiere accounts? I have a Business account.
I've been doing a lot of reading and even picked up the phone & called PayPal on 12/29 at 1-402-935-2050 (U.S.). I was informed that PayPal can process recurring charges: (a) via a credit card if my customer registers the credit card with PayPal; (b) via funds in my customer's PayPal account; or (c) via any bank account the customer has added to their PayPal account. The bottom line is that as long as my customer is signed up for PayPal, my customer can have recurring credit card charges. My customer could have signed up for PayPal either before ever having subscribed to anything on my web site or during my company's subscription process when my customer is taken to the PayPal site and given a chance to sign up for PayPal.
If one's customer does not have a PayPal account and the customer does not open a PayPal account when signing up, e.g., when signing up with a credit card for a subscription I offer, the customer is asked to open a PayPal account after the 3rd time the credit card is used. However, this process is still a bit unclear to me. For example, I didn't ask PayPal how my customer would be notified it's time to again pay my monthly subscription. Would I need to manually track and remind all my customers who signed up for a subscription via PayPal but didn't open a PayPal account? Would PayPal send my customers who didn't open a PayPal account a reminder via email? I don't know.
By the way, you can do a search on PayPal's site for recurring to find further info.
Thanks in advance for any helpful info and elaboration!
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
How i use paypal recurring payments to save time
This is a long thread and I didn't read every post. But I kept seeing posts that seem to be contrary to my experience with Paypal. So here's my experience and I hope I am not repeating exactly someone else's post:
When I want a customer to pay me the same amount in identical time periods, like for monthly hosting charge, I just refer them to a page where I've already installed a "paypal subscriptions button", which I generate in paypal and copy and paste into my html, just like any old "buy button."
The customer who clicks on the button, ends up at paypal and can choose to either pay with credit card or open a paypal account and go with bank drafts. Once authorized by customer, charges occur automatically according to schedule you've set. You can set the pay button to be endless or just do so many payments and then stop charging.
I never ever have to worry about contacting the customer again. No reauthorization for future payments necessary. I get an email every time there's a recurring charge is made. And--for me this is very important--if a customer stops a recurring plan, then paypal lets me know. That's when I know a customer does not intend to pay me anymore. This is very important because that's when I give notice to pull the plug on their account. No more billing and rebilling to figure out if they are really going to pay me. No messing with producing and sending invoicing, no checks to deposit at the bank and have bounce on me, none of that. And it takes a pretty desperate customer to claim he or she can't afford a cc charge one month and to ask for more time. If they are that bankrupt, you don't want them as a customer.
All the paypal instructions are here: https://www.paypalobjects.com/WEBSCR-440-20070110-3/en_US/pdf/subscripti...
So this is why I wonder why this thread is so long. Perhaps people who need a module for recurring payments have needs far greater (like many types of payment plans created dynamically and with many products). For me, a one-man operation with a particular hatred for paperwork and playing games with difficult customers, the above plan has worked beautifully and well worth the 3% cut paypal takes.
Is this PayPal process automated to allow instant log-in?
Thanks for the link to PayPal's subscriptions.pdf file titled, "Subscriptions and Recurring Payments Guide". Although the link didn't work, I was able to find it on paypal.com by looking around at bit. Here's the link in case others need it:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/subscr-manual-out...
I have a few questions that I'd appreciate if crispy or someone in a similar situation to him could answer for me.
When customers sign up for hosting as in crispy's situation and are then taken to PayPal's servers so they can pay for recurring billing (whether they use PayPal's debit which takes money from their account or whether they use their credit card), do these customers then have immediate access to their hosting account? Or do the customers have to wait for crispy (or someone in a similar situation) to be made aware of their customers' payment via some notification such as an email from PayPal that then alerts crispy (or someone similar) to then activate the customer's hosting account? In other words, I'm concerned about whether or not customers who have paid for recurring billing via PayPal can then log in immediately to my web site.
In my scenario, I would like my customers to be able to access their account as soon as possible with as little action as necessary on my part after the customer has paid for a recurring subscription via PayPal. I don't want my customers waiting on me to activate them if they come to my Drupal front-end web site, sign up via PayPal for recurring payments, and are then taken back to my web site. Even though they're back at my web site, without some code to allow PayPal and Drupal to "talk"to each other, I see no way to give my customers instant access once they've paid via PayPal. It appears that software such as aMember (which costs $140 plus another $40 for their Drupal plug-in) talks to PayPal and is able to activate a specific role for my customer on my web site based upon what the customer paid for via PayPal.
Does the new Drupal E-Commerce contributed module, version 5.x-4.0-alpha3, allow my customers to log in immediately to the specified role they paid for via PayPal in the manner that aMember allows? If so, is the only way to do this via inserting some special code generated via PayPal (e.g. Instant Payment Notification) into my Drupal web site's e-commerce module? Or is it all handled through 5.x-4.0-alpha3's subscriptions and recurring payments admin interface? I see that the latest e-commerce module's features include "Subscriptions and recurring payments" but a bit more detail on how this works would be especially helpful.
Thank you VERY MUCH in advance for any helpful comments! (I posted a link to this post over on the groups.drupal.org E-Commerce group since there are lots of experts there.)
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
No immediate access in my case.
Walt, I rely on email from Paypal email alerting me that a payment has been received and then I setup their hosting account manually. I guess it depends on the product you're selling. I am selling a customized website and not just hosting, so no immediate need to have a functioning account since it takes time to build their website and have running. But many hosts, even many giant, well-known names, take up to 24-hours or longer to setup the account. (Maybe I am wrong and things have changed in the 2 years since I last bought hosting myself). Immediate gratification is always preferable, though. But I never explored how to do that.
PayPal does not support recurring *credit card* payments
PayPal supports recurring debits *if* you sign-up using PayPal as your payment method, ie. your customers have to sign-up or already be signed up with PayPal in order to subscribe to a recurring payment scheme.
If you want your customers to be able to sign-up with credit card only, PayPal does not support this (at least it didn't the last time we set-up this type of system).
www.awdd.ca
Thanks for letting me know.
Thanks for letting me know. I was not aware of not being able to use CC on recurring payments.
Wrong choice of words?
Hey deville,
Thanks for your post, but I think your choice of words is a bit confusing. To say that PP does not support recurring credit card payments is, from what I've gathered, simply wrong.
Now if you want to say that PP doesn't allow recurring credit card payments without someone first creating a PP account, yes, I'll agree with that. But PP needs a new customer to create the PP account first, and then the customer can tie his/her credit card to the newly established PP account. Or, in the case of an already established PP account, the customer simply needs to, if not already done, tie in a credit card account with his/her PP account. Once that has been done, the recurring credit card payments can begin. Isn't that the way it works with PP? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Recurring billing via a credit card is needed
LM_PayPal apparently does NOT support recurring debits via a credit card.
So, I'm still looking for an affordable solution to my need for recurring billing via a credit card. I need an open-source shopping cart or a Drupal module that will allow credit card payments on a recurring basis without end-user interaction, and to do so preferably on someone else's server such as PayPal's as I prefer to NOT store credit card numbers.
1. Does anyone know if there is ANY Drupal module that does recurring billing via a credit card? Does anything in the Drupal ecommerce module allow this?
2. Does anyone know if there is ANY open-source shopping cart that does recurring billing via a credit card?
If the functionality I've described above doe NOT yet exist, I have posted more detailed info on my needs where I'm asking if any developer is interested in a reverse bounty.
Thanks in advance & Happy New Year!
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Subscribing
...
.
--
( Evaluating the long-term route for Drupal 7.x via BackdropCMS at https://www.CMX.zone )
E-Commerce Version 3
It looks like the new e-commerce module, E-Commerce Version 3 (For Drupal 4.7 and 5), does recurring billing. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, so I can't give much of a report.
nope
ecom3 supports recurring invoicing just as it did before... that means it manages that an invoice is due,
but it does not charge the client.
no sign of recurring charging yet, and I didn't even get a response to my questions for ETA so far
--- http://www.cemper.com
--- http://weblog.cemper.com
--- http://www.marketingfan.com
PayPal's Payflow Pro does recurring billing
It looks like Payflow Pro does recurring billing with credit cards and eChecks all behind the scenes. That means no sending to PayPal, unless you want to offer PayPal as a payment option. It looks like there is a small thread http://groups.drupal.org/node/3158 which has some info and works in progress to integrate with Ecommerce and Ubercart.
--
Rob Barreca
Drupal Architect
ChipIn, Inc.
Electronic Insight Corporation
Learn how you can contribute to Drupal.
New control/library supporting ARB (and AIM) for Authorize.net
While the original post was well over a year ago, there has been recent enough activity to warrant adding on. My company has just released I-Bill IT, a library/control that offers a rich object-model for interfacing with Authorize.net. It is written in C#/.NET, but is also callable from any COM/scripting language on Windows platforms (ASP/vbscript, PHP, etc.). More importantly, and relevant to this thread, is that, as far as I know, it is the *only* library currently out there that supports Authorize.net's Automated Recurring Billing (ARB) feature as well as Advanced Integration Method (AIM). As I said above, it offers a rich object model over the Authorize.net services, making it much easier and faster to add such functionality to your application.
Also, we worked closely with Authorize.net during the development of the control and it is certified by them for both AIM and ARB.
Details
Download Url: http://www.itdevworks.com/download.aspx
Online documentation: http://www.itdevworks.com/Documentation/iBillit/1.0/
If you download the control without a purchased license, it will run in "trial" mode, where you can either submit payments to Authorize.net's test gateways, OR you can submit transactions to the live gateways, but in test mode. There is no timeout on the trial version.
To purchase a license, the cost is $99.00 per server/installation.
I hope this helps someone out.
David Parker
President
IT DevWorks, LLC
http://www.itdevworks.com
We first looked at ubercart,
We first looked at ubercart, but now we're looking at CiviCRM. http://civicrm.org/
I think it will support it, but just starting with recurring billing solution, who knows where we'll end up.
good luck.
We first looked at ubercart,
We first looked at ubercart, but now we're looking at CiviCRM. http://civicrm.org/
I think it will support it, but just starting with recurring billing solution, who knows where we'll end up.
good luck.
We first looked at ubercart,
We first looked at ubercart, but now we're looking at CiviCRM. http://civicrm.org/
I think it will support it, but just starting with recurring billing solution, who knows where we'll end up.
good luck.
We first looked at ubercart,
We first looked at ubercart, but now we're looking at CiviCRM. http://civicrm.org/
I think it will support it, but just starting with recurring billing solution, who knows where we'll end up.
good luck.