Paypal and Recurring Payments

[thdrought]

I have read about every thread on this subject, and unless I missed something, you are not able to use Paypal's recurring payment option with HSphere.

I don't nessesarily understand why, since it would be similar to recurring credit card billing, except that instead of initiating a credit card debit, it would wait for paypal to send an IPN, and, if not received by a certain day, say 35 days, an email would be sent to the customer.

Is this something that is being worked out? Is it even possible to do? Would I have to script my own customer billing solution? Could it be incorporated into the existing my HSphere control panel automation?

Lastly, has anyone tried this already? Anyone already created their own solution? Or, would anyone be interested in helping to also get their hands on the script?

Thanks. Any insight/help would be great.

[Carly]

I'm not entirely sure on this, but I thought I read somewhere that recurring billing doesn't work with PayPal because PayPal's security features flip out when one ID is charged multiple times for the same thing - even if after a certain # of days.

If I find where I read this again, I'll post the link.

[thdrought]

[quote=Carly]I'm not entirely sure on this, but I thought I read somewhere that recurring billing doesn't work with PayPal because PayPal's security features flip out when one ID is charged multiple times for the same thing - even if after a certain # of days.[quote]

Way would the billing system here try to re-charge the customer? Once the subscription is in place, it will charge itself. All we care about is whether the transaction is sucessful every month. Using IPN, it can be logged automatically into the customer billing db. If, after so many days, we do not get an IPN with that customers Paypal ID, then, the system could sspend the account, or, just trigger emails to the customer and the reseller of the matter.

The only problems I see with this is:
1) Setup fees. Though, it could be setup to charge the fee in a 1 day trial of the paypal subscription. On day 2, the charge would go through starting normal monthly payments.

2) The customer would have to be locked down so he could not go over the allotted limits on the reseller account.

3) If the customer wanted to upgrade their account, add features, etc. the system would have to cancel the existing subscription and setup a new one.

I know this would be a basic solution, but I think it would help a lot of new resellers out with billing. Once they get big enough, they should sign on for a merchant account anyway.

Comments, suggestions?

[Brangwyn]

Your best bet is to raise it on the psoft forums as it's not something Vortech can really do anything about, it's just something Psoft have not provided for in H-Sphere (and I don't think have plans to either). 2Checkout is exactly the same as well and doesn't support recurring payments.

I dont think its anything that Psoft can change. Contact PAYPAL. Even when you signup, you are sent to THEIR pages for the payment details. Its just the way paypal works, payments must be processed through their site.

[Brangwyn]

Actually I think the paypal "API" does allow for it (2Checkout though doesnt afaik), problem is psoft aren't even using that they're basically just using a querystring ... or in other words they hacked it together.

[thdrought]

Yes, it can be done. And, it's not really very hard. I drafted out the procedures to get it working and will post this on PSoft.

Just like what Brangwyn posted, it's all in the reply with the IPN. Here's more of the details on Recurring Payments, IPN and my solution. If I can somehow tie it into the PSoft db's to make the customers site creation automatic, it would be perfect.

First, the customer initiates the first steps, just like a credit card charge. Enters in the type of site he would like, adds the options available (SQL, Domain Names, etc). They enter their customer information and selects to pay with Paypal, instead of a credit card.

Now, my scripts take over, calculates the setup fees and monthly, quarterly or yearly charge based off the customer selection. A customer ID is entered into my database with this information.

Then, a simple script dynamically creates the Recurring Subscription link to Paypal and redirects the customer to Paypal to finalize the payment procedures based of the script in the previous paragraph. (Nothing special here. It's all in Paypal's Recurring Payment documentation.)

When the customer is complete with the Paypal transaction, the customer is redirected back to my hosting site with a "Thank You" message, "You will receive you username/password to the email address provided." Blah, blah, blah.

Here's where the real stuff happens, and what PSoft should provide. Through the Paypal IPN (also in Paypal's official docs), a sucess or failure message is send back to my script with the customer ID, transaction ID, payment amount, whether the transaction is successful, failed, or pending. My simple script takes the customer ID from the message, locates it in my customer db, writes the response and the website is created. (Again, nothing special here. Same as a CC charge, except that the response is not instant.)

Now, once a month, Paypal will automatically charge the client for me. When the transaction happens, Paypal automatically send me an IPN response again and using the same script above, it all gets logged into my database for me. If it's sucessful, great...I'm getting paid and the customer keeps his site for another month. If, for whatever reason, the transaction fails, an IPN is sent with a failure status. Paypal will try two more times. On the third time, if it's still a failure, Paypal cancels the Subscription, and I get an IPN back that it's cancelled. When a cancel on any client happens, the script treats it just like if a CC transaction fails. The same IPN comes to me if the customer cancels the Paypal payment. I automatically get notified.

With this solution, I am no longer chasing customers once a month to make payment. They no longer have to come to my site to make a monthly payment. I get immediately notified if anything happens.

And the best part, now, I can make a billing webpage, pulling all the IPN tracactions out so the customer can view their payments made. They would love this for many reasons, mostly around tax time. And, it all happens on my site. They don't have to run around all over the place...is my site still running, go to their customer control panel...how is billing, go to paypal...and on, and on, and on.

Any questions, comments, suggestions? I just have to tap into the power existing at PSofts billing databases to get the setup and payment automated. And, maybe I can...

Read: http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentation...stems.html#xml

My post to Psoft can be viewed at : http://www.forum.psoft.net/showthrea...3675#post33675

[Brangwyn]

Read: http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentatio...ystems.html#xml

Unfortunately that documentation is only applicable to the H-Sphere administrator not us lowly resellers Hopefully psoft will consider adding something permanently though in a future release, I've mentioned it many times before but they really need to make an API that allows resellers to query the database securely and efficiently and then they'd have one hell of a control panel.