Accepting Credit Card Payments

Question

Please be patient, this is new for me. I know the bare
minimum, and have only designed basic web sites. (I'm primarily a
print designer.)
I have a client that needs to be able to accept credit card
payments on his site. No shopping cart, no products being sold.
He's a debt collector, and wants people to be able to come to his
site to make a payment directly. I tried talking him into Paypal
because I think I can figure that out. But he wants the credit card
stuff directly on HIS site.
I know he needs to have SSL set up (right?). He set up his
hosting himself, so I'll have to find out what he has. He has to
have some kind of merchant services in order to accept credit card
payments...I'm trying to get that info from him as well. I'm at the
point where I don't even know what to ask him or tell him.
I've found third-party services out there that seemed like a
good idea (some mentioned on this forum), but they're for setting
up shopping carts. I don't need that, just the payment part.
Is there anyone out there willing to point me in the right
direction?? What's the equation for getting this accomplished?
Thank you!
Lisa

Answer 1

macnut4 wrote:
> Please be patient, this is new for me. I know the bare
minimum, and have only
> designed basic web sites. (I'm primarily a print
designer.)
> I have a client that needs to be able to accept credit
card payments on his
> site. No shopping cart, no products being sold. He's a
debt collector, and
> wants people to be able to come to his site to make a
payment directly. I tried
> talking him into Paypal because I think I can figure
that out. But he wants the
> credit card stuff directly on HIS site.
> I know he needs to have SSL set up (right?). He set up
his hosting himself, so
> I'll have to find out what he has. He has to have some
kind of merchant
> services in order to accept credit card payments...I'm
trying to get that info
> from him as well. I'm at the point where I don't even
know what to ask him or
> tell him.
> I've found third-party services out there that seemed
like a good idea (some
> mentioned on this forum), but they're for setting up
shopping carts. I don't
> need that, just the payment part.
>
> Is there anyone out there willing to point me in the
right direction?? What's
> the equation for getting this accomplished?
>
> Thank you!
>
> Lisa
>
>
Hi Lisa:
If you want to work with a payment gateway, you're pretty
much going to
have to use a shopping cart solution as they include
scripting that
enables the cart to interface with the payment gateway.
Otherwise you're
going to have to hand code your API calls to the payment
gateway.
Here are some things to think about:
1. Does he have a database that you can put online so that he
can search
and view creditor records?
2. Does his hosting provider support any kind of Server Model
such as
ASP, PHP or Coldfusion?
3. Does the payment data need to be stored in a database so
your client
can retrieve it at a later time, or does he plan to use the
payment
gateway's control panel to view payments received?
These three questions need to be answered to determine the
extent of the
application you can develop. I'd recommend strongly that the
client have
a database which stores all creditor information, including a
creditor
ID and that the website you develop have a User
Authentication module so
that creditors can log in to their own accounts, view their
records and
make partial or full payments to your client using your
application.
To implement this, you're going to have to host your site on
a server
that supports a Server Model such as ASP VBScript, ASP
JScript, PHP or
Coldfusion. Have your client check with his hosting provider
to see what
Server Model is supported if any. You may need to move him to
a hosting
provider that supports one of these models. This is because
however you
implement this application you're going to AT LEAST be able
to post form
data to a processor page that uses a server language(model).
If a database of creditor information is on the server, it
makes sense
to store payment information in the database and to update
creditor
information, or to give your client administrator privileges
so that he
can update the creditor information when a payment has been
made. Also
consider that there may be fees such as interest on principle
or some
kind of amortization calculation to determine the actual
percentage of
the debt that has been paid when a partial payment is made.
With this information in mind, and knowing that you'll have
to code User
Authentication, Payment Calculations, API scripting to pass
data to the
payment gateway, Success and Failure pages that display data
about the
payment as well as a search pages to display creditor data to
the
creditor as well as a back-end administrative application to
allow your
client to update the data in his database, you may want to
consider
using some tools to help you with this kind of project.
WebAssist has the tools to allow you to build the User
Authentication,
Data search and manipulation and also the non-shopping cart
payment
application that you need to use which will interface
silently with
payment gateways such as Autorize.NET, PayPal's Website
Payments Pro,
Payflow Pro, LinkPint API as well as international payment
gateways such
as eWay and ProTX. Check out these tools and see if they will
be
appropriate for your task:
SecurityAssist:
http://www.webassist.com/professional/products/productdetails.asp?PID=114&CouponID=lm4gyi& RID=590&WAAID=92
DataAssist:
http://www.webassist.com/professional/products/productdetails.asp?PID=117&CouponID=lm4gyi& RID=590&WAAID=92
eCart (don't let the name fool you! It can be configured in
such a way
that your client doesn't even know he's using a product that
has the
word "cart" in it!)
http://www.webassist.com/professional/products/productdetails.asp?PID=123&CouponID=ecart41 &RID=590&WAAID=92
If you have any questions, call the 800 number at the top of
any page or
email sales at webassist dot com.
enthusiastically,
mark haynes